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PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
INAUGURATION OF 
JOHN HUSTON FINLEY 









John Huston Finley 



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PROCEEDINGS 

OF THE 

INAUGURATION OF 
JOHN HUSTON FINLEY 

AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY 
OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK AND 
COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 



State Education Building 
January 2, 1914 






NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

TENTH ANNUAL REPORT— VOLUME 4 

ALBANY 1914 



D. Of BJ 
iUN 11 1919 



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INTRODUCTION 

The first Commissioner of Education of the State of 
New York, elected by the Legislature upon the unifica- 
tion of the two State educational departments in 1904, 
was Dr Andrew S. Draper, recalled to his native State 
from the presidency of the University of Illinois. His 
administration was marked by a complete reorganization 
of the educational interests of the State, an insured har- 
mony in all the educational activities of the State, and the 
completion of the State Education Building, a monument 
to his administrative genius. His death on April 27, 
1913, created a vacancy in the great office which his serv- 
ice had magnified. 

During the interim following the death of Commissioner 
Draper, the duties of Commissioner of Education were 
performed by the Vice Chancellor of the University, Dr 
Pliny T. Sexton. With great self-sacrifice and devotion, 
and with no remuneration for his services, Doctor Sex- 
ton actively gave several months to the conduct of the 
affairs of the Department, perfecting the unification for 
which he had during many years labored with unceas- 
ing zeal. As stated in the memorial presented to him by 
the staff of the Department on relinquishing his duties, 
his administration of the high office he " temporarily filled 
so acceptably and so efficiently " was marked " by con- 
stant courtesy, by patient attention to details, by thorough 
and painstaking investigation of all matters requiring his 
official action, by helpful suggestions, and by kindly 
criticisms." 

On July 2d, at the meeting of the Regents of the Uni- 
versity, John H. Finley, President of the College of the 



8 The University of the State of Nev> York 

City of New York, was unanimously elected Commis- 
sioner of Education. The Board of Regents at the same 
meeting created the office of President of the University 
and elected Doctor Finley to this office. The amendment 
to the Regents Rules creating this office is as follows: 

The University and its President. For 
more complete unification of the relations of the 
State to education, The University of the State of 
New York shall be the State Education Depart- 
ment and is hereby charged with, and under its cap- 
tion and in its name as such University shall exer- 
cise the general management and supervision of all 
public schools and all the educational work of the 
State. 

In furtherance of such unification and of the de- 
velopment and perfecting of the educational system 
of this State, there is hereby created the office of 
President of The University of the State of New 
York, whose incumbent shall be chosen by ballot by, 
and shall hold his office during the pleasure of, the 
Board of Regents, and he is hereby charged, in ad- 
dition to such other duties and functions as may 
otherwise be devolved upon him, with the power and 
duty of general supervision over all educational work 
and activities of this State, and it shall be his duty 
also to devote himself to educational research, to the 
study of the educational work and systems of other 
jurisdictions, and selectively and reflectively, with 
the approval of the Board of Regents, to introduce 
and originate, so far as possible, better methods of 
education, and especially to endeavor in every fea- 
sible way to bring about the improved development 
and greater usefulness of the common schools of this 
State, of which the Board of Regents were the first 
official promoters and are now the sponsors and 
guardians. 



Inauguration Proceedings 



The President of the University may attend all 
meetings of the Board of Regents and of its commit- 
tees, submit matters for their consideration and par- 
ticipate in their discussions. 

It is hereby further provided that the Commis- 
sioner of Education, if there be such official then 
in office, shall alone be eligible for election to the 
office of President of the University. 

President Finley soon gave promise of his acceptance, 
with the expectation of taking office on the first of Octo- 
ber, as he wished to carry to conclusion certain projects 
which he had undertaken at the College of the City of 
New York, and also to assist in beginning the work of 
the new college year. In the meantime he was invited 
by the National Board of Mediation and Arbitration to 
act as one of the two independent arbitrators in the great 
railroad controversy involving more than forty railroads 
and more than eighty thousand railroad conductors and 
trainmen. With the consent of the Regents of the 
University, Doctor Finley sat as a member of this court 
during September, October and a part of November. 
He took the oath of office as Commissioner of Edu- 
cation and President of the University on the 29th of 
November. 

It had been originally planned to hold the ceremonies 
of his inauguration at the time of the autumn convoca- 
tion. As this could not be compassed, however, it was 
finally determined that such exercises should be held on 
the second day of January. 

On this beautiful winter's day there gathered in the 
auditorium of the State Education Building representa- 
tives from all the educational institutions of the State, 
from the leading colleges and universities and learned 



10 The University of the State of New York 

societies of the United States, and from many of the 
higher institutions of learning in Europe. On the formal 
program, New York was represented by the Governor of 
the State; New Jersey by the State Commissioner of 
Education; the President of the United States by the 
Secretary of the Interior; the Republic of France by His 
Excellency, the French Ambassador. 

The addresses were of an unusually high order; the 
felicitations most cordial. The inaugural of President Fin- 
ley was a pledge to service, and while it included in its 
scope the great city schools, its thought was particularly 
of the districts of greater need. 

By no means the least of the delights of the day was 
the marked hospitality shown by the Governor and Mrs 
Glynn. At noon the Governor gave a breakfast at the 
Executive Mansion in honor of President Finley. There 
were present the distinguished speakers and guests and the 
Regents of the University. After the formal exercises 
of the afternoon the Governor and Mrs Glynn gave a 
large reception at the Executive Mansion in honor of 
President and Mrs Finley. 

In the evening, at the close of the formal program, a 
reception was given in the rotunda of the Education Build- 
ing. A large, representative gathering of educators, men 
and women prominent in civic life, officials from State 
and nation, were present to meet the new Commissioner 
and President. In the receiving line were President and 
Mrs Finley, the Governor and Mrs Glynn, the mem- 
bers of the Board of Regents and their wives, and the 
distinguished guests of the occasion. The reception 
formed a most fitting close to the inaugural exercises. 



PROGRAM OF EXERCISES 

TEN A. M. 
Informal gathering in Library reading room (228) for 
registration and greetings 

TWO P. M. 
Invocation by the Right Reverend Richard H. Nelson 

Bishop of Albany 

Opening address by the Honorable St Clair McKelway 

Chancellor of the University 

Address in behalf of universities and colleges, Nicholas 
Murray Butler 

President, Columbia University 

Address in behalf of secondary schools, Frank S. Fosdick 
Principal, Masten Par\ High School, Buffalo 

Address in behalf of elementary schools, A. R. Bru- 
bacher 

Superintendent of Schools, Schenectady 

Address in behalf of educational departments of other 
states, the Honorable Calvin N. Kendall 

Commissioner of Education of New Jersey 

Address in behalf of the citizens of the State, William 
Church Osborn 

Inaugural address by John Huston Finley 

President of the University 

Greetings from delegates 

Benediction by the Right Reverend T. M. A. Burke 

Bishop of the Diocese of Albany 



12 The University of the State of Nen> York 

SEVEN-THIRTY P. M. 
The Chancellor of the University, presiding 

Address by the Honorable Martin H. Glynn 

Governor of the State of New York 

Address by the Honorable Franklin K. Lane 

Secretary of the Interior 

Address by Charles William Eliot 

President Emeritus, Harvard University 

Address by His Excellency, J. J. Jusserand 

Ambassador from France 

Reception 

Following the exercises a reception was held in 
the rotunda of the Education Building 



AFTERNOON SESSION 



INVOCATION BY THE RIGHT REVEREND 
RICHARD H. NELSON 

Bishop of Albany 

Almighty God, who art the Fountain of all wisdom, 
we beseech Thee to send Thy blessing upon the Gov- 
ernor and the people of this State, as well as upon the 
officers, teachers and pupils of this University, and to 
grant that, walking in Thy truth, they may come to ever- 
lasting life. 

In particular, we ask Thy favor toward this Thy 
servant who is entering upon his duties as President of 
the University and Commissioner of Education. Give 
to him a wise and understanding heart that he may lead 
Thy people to the waters of knowledge and guide them 
unto righteousness of life. All which we ask in the name 
of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



ADDRESS BY ST CLAIR McKELWAY 
Chancellor of The University of the State of New York 

The University of the State of New York bids you 
welcome. We are assembled on a notable occasion for 
a significant purpose, to complete and to attest the inau- 
guration of the President of the University and the State 
Commissioner of Education. Doctor Finley was chosen 
long months ago. Under usual circumstances his duties 
would have begun when he was elected. 

Unusual circumstances, however, intervened to prevent 
his immediate assumption of his duties. He was honor- 
ably bound to complete the decade of service in the 
field from which he had been translated to his present 
office by the unanimous suffrage of our Board. He was 
chosen after careful consideration of other eminent men. 
They themselves recognize that we have made a choice 
which commends itself to instructors at home and abroad. 

This was not effected before a call that could not be 
withstood was laid on him and on us. On him and 
Seth Low was devolved the duty to undertake the ac- 
complishment of peace in our industrial world. That 
peace in our State in that world has been signed and 
sealed. The hope and belief is that the example will tell 
in other States. The broader faith is that the example 
will be a help and a hope to industrial peace and justice 
at least within the whole Union. 

Our Board is gratified that these two arbitrators of 
peace with justice and of justice with peace, neither of 
whom would have served without the other, have returned 



18 The University of the State of New York 

bearing their shields, and not on them. If their task de- 
ferred Doctor Finley's assumption of his educational duty 
to the State, its postponement coincided with the nation's 
and the word's introduction to him to a role of benefit to 
the race, and with his introduction to a work agreeable 
and grateful to men. That experience has identified him 
as a factor of an industrial education larger than books 
and broader than schools and stronger than politically 
formulated government. The precedent is invaluable and 
unimpeachable. 

Other men might have wrought the same deed. These 
two, of whom one was our representative, did perform it 
and we are glad others were not asked to perform it. 
We rejoice that Doctor Finley can begin with us under 
the impact of the distinction of the work which can never 
pass from him. 

We are glad to hail his return. We rejoice to ac- 
knowledge the fidelity of every deputy commissioner and 
every head of a department and of every other employee 
here to the work entrusted to each. We have been sus- 
tained by the assurance that every university, every col- 
lege, every public school, every academy, and every 
organization and every city, county and township factor 
in our State has cooperated with us in the absence of 
Doctor Finley and welcomes his return to his duties. He 
has wrought in what has been rated to be outside the 
set limits of organized education, but he has expanded 
those limits to cover industrial and humanitarian fields 
with which education must hereafter be identified, if it 
would be continued by the will of the people, by the gov- 
ernment of the people and by the voted resources of the 
people. 



Inauguration Proceedings 1 9 

It is a great pleasure to acknowledge for this State oc- 
casion the responses sent out in the name of the Depart- 
ment. They were sent to eminent educators of our na- 
tional government, of our sister commonwealths and of 
the Dominion, as well as to foreign governments. Such 
as could come will tender their words of greeting and 
congratulation. Such as could not have forwarded ex- 
pressions attesting their regret that they can not and their 
best wishes for the occasion to signalize which we are 
gathered. The published records of our Board will con- 
tain every utterance here spoken. Those records will be 
procurable to all here or dispatched to those who found 
they could not be here. We are glad our Governor and 
other State officials can be with us and that representatives 
of sister governments in notable instances can here be 
greeted and heard by all of us. 

I shall not and I should not longer stand between them 
and you, but shall be content to develop the program de- 
vised for this auspicious conjunction of inauguration and 
congratulation on this eventful day. 



ADDRESS BY NICHOLAS MURRAY 
BUTLER 

President of Columbia University 

IN BEHALF OF THE UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES 

It seems but yesterday that the representatives of every 
type of educational activity in the State and in the nation 
assembled in this hall to dedicate to its high purpose this 
Education Building and to congratulate the Commissioner 
of Education whose iron will and inflexible purpose were 
chiefly responsible for it. Today we gather here again 
to greet his successor in office and to offer assurance of 
hearty support, earnest cooperation, and sincere good will, 
as he sets his hand to a new and weighty task. We count 
with confidence upon the continuance and extension, un- 
der his administration, of those policies, already well 
established, that have made this State an example to its 
fellows. We count in particular upon the continued 
maintenance of standards without fear or favor; upon the 
continuance of the complete exclusion of the influences of 
partisan politics from the school system in all its parts; 
and upon the continuance of the practice of turning neither 
to the right nor to the left because some measure of passing 
popularity or some shouts of acclaim are to be gained 
thereby. 

There is no more sure measure of a people's progress 
in civilization than the growth of their power of self- 
control and self-discipline. The basis for the self-control 
and the self-discipline of a democratic people must be laid 
in their homes and in the schools. If the schools fail in 
this, there is no adequate compensation they can offer in 
the form of learning or instruction. The test of success 



22 The University of the State of New York 

in a school system, and the test of success in the work of 
a college or a university, is not its size, however great; 
or its wealth, however large; or its equipment, however 
striking. The test is the quality of the men and women 
that it trains and sends out for service to the common- 
wealth. How much a State spends upon education is 
an item for the curious or for the collector of statistics. 
What the State gets in return for what it spends upon 
education is the vitally important matter. More than ever 
before in its history this nation today is in need of men 
— strong, high-principled, clear-sighted men — who can 
so shape and guide public policy, and who can so form 
and determine public character, that the great purposes of 
the nation's builders and the highest ideals of their chil- 
dren's children shall be achieved. 

To run with the crowd is a pleasant, and sometimes a 
profitable, form of exercise. It is frequently amusing; but 
it has in it more of moral and intellectual debilitation than 
any other human occupation or avocation. To observe 
with scientific precision, to report with scientific accuracy, 
and to think with logical correctness, are the chief needs 
of the educational guide of today. We have suffered 
overmuch from platitudes in education, and we have paid 
our full homage to misguided and superficial flattery of 
schools and school systems, when searching and construc- 
tive criticism was what the public interest demanded. The 
time has certainly come when we must leave off tickling 
our own vanity and arousing the scornful smiles of other 
peoples by shouting loudly that our schools, our colleges, 
our universities, are the best in the world; that our ex- 
penditures for education are the largest ever known; and 
that, looking at all the peoples of civilization dispassion- 
ately — which dispassionateness we gladly admit — no 



Inauguration Proceedings 23 

one of them is in any way the equal of ourselves! When 
Mr Lowell was writing his charming essay on a certain 
condescension in foreigners, I have always felt that his 
sly humor left in the back of his head an unwritten essay 
on a certain self-satisfaction in ourselves. 

Persistent, searching, constructive criticism is what 
American education most needs today. We must ask not 
only whether what we are doing is worth while in itself, 
but toward what goal it is tending. We must reexamine, 
in the light of history and of much experience, those proc- 
esses and those formulas that are usually accepted with- 
out question because they are familiar. We must face 
the future with the past in our hands and not spend too 
much time in looking backward. 

In the State of New York, all educational agencies 
and instrumentalities are fortunate in being gathered to- 
gether in one great system of administration and supervi- 
sion. Thereby opportunities for cooperation and mutual 
understanding are multiplied, while occasions for friction 
and conflict are diminished. From the Regents of the 
University and from the Commissioner of Education the 
schools, colleges and universities ask, first of all and 
chiefly, for sympathy and for understanding. Education 
can not be cast in a single mold and remain adapted to the 
needs of a free people. It must be so flexible, so many- 
sided, so rich in opportunity, that no talent is lost through 
lack of care or occasion for use. It is the genius of all 
Anglo-Saxon civilization, as it is that of the English com- 
mon law, to meet situations as they arise with such wisdom 
as is at hand, and not to attempt to forecast all possible con- 
tingencies and to provide for them by rigid rule. It is in 
this spirit that the educational system of a great state 
should be administered and supervised. It is the spirit of 



24 The University) of the State of New York 

sympathy, the spirit of tolerance, the spirit of understand- 
ing, the spirit of insight, that make central administration 
and supervision real and vital. It is upon such a spirit 
that the colleges and universities of the State count with 
confidence in the administration that opens today under 
such happy auspices. To its head we bring cordial greet- 
ing and assurance of our united support and cooperation. 



ADDRESS BY FRANK S. FOSDICK 

Principal of Masten Park High School, Buffalo 

IN BEHALF OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS 
It would be a superfluity before such an audience, rep- 
resenting as it does the best scholarship of our State, to 
speak on the technisms of our work. It would imply a 
sad lack of judgment to dwell upon educational methods, 
of which it can be truthfully said, as of all systems that 
adhere to a hard and fixed order of procedure, some are 
good, some are bad and some, we might almost say a ma- 
jority, are indifferent. It would be entirely foreign to the 
spirit and intent of this afternoon's exercises to discuss 
laboriously the latest reports from the fields of psychology 
or eugenics and endeavor to satisfy our mental machinery 
as to what stand we should take. This occasion is not 
for such wearisome tasks. Without detriment they can 
be omitted for a time. 

We are assembled to celebrate what we believe, what 
we know, is a most auspicious event in the long and hon- 
orable history of our State Education Department. Last 
spring a great director in the domain of education passed 
into the silence, bequeathing to all a rich legacy of faith- 
ful service. As Commissioner working with the Honor- 
able Board of Regents, he left the great department of 
which he was the head so well organized that his depar- 
ture caused scarcely a ripple on the surface of its activities. 
Today we welcome a new leader who assumes not only 
the duties of the former but also added responsibilities, 
and it is most fitting that representatives of the three divi- 
sions of the educational bureau should be present and 



26 The University of the State of New York 



voice their feelings with expressions of good will and al- 
legiance. ' The king is dead, long live the king." 

I deem it a great honor to represent at this time the 
secondary schools of the State and I am proud of my con- 
nection with them. Whatever may be said of the gram- 
mar schools and colleges of the country — and no one 
has a higher regard for them than I — there still faces 
us the indisputable fact that the four years spent in our 
high schools, at an age the most impressionable and the 
most dangerous, mean more to our boys and girls than 
any other period of their lives. There is no more perplex- 
ingly fascinating work to be found under the skies than 
that which meets us every morning, no work that calls for 
greater sanity and downright common sense. To gain the 
confidence of our pupils, to enter into their lives, to be in- 
terested in everything that concerns them, to stimulate or 
repress as their best good demands, require a mental 
and moral discernment that is not always obtainable — 
and we say, often with a sense of impending failure, 
"Who is sufficient for these things? " But a careful sur- 
vey of the hundreds of high schools in the State will re- 
veal the encouraging fact that the general uplift is re- 
markable and the influences that tend to civic as well as 
to individual uprightness can not be easily estimated. Not 
that I would have you think for a moment that they are 
perfect or do not need improvement. It would be strange 
indeed if it were otherwise. There are and always will 
be differences of opinion about some of the policies of the 
State Department; there will be laxity in discipline and 
instruction; lack of harmony among the teachers, which 
is so fatal to success; a perversion of the so-called school 
spirit; questions about the scope and general make-up of 
the examinations. These need not cause anxiety since we 



Inauguration Proceedings 27 

know that the directing mind is in close sympathy with 
our aims, our problems, our hindrances; that he is pos- 
sessed of broad vision, a keen judgment and can furnish 
a soothing balm or a stiff tonic as the occasion demands. 
Surely the high schools have great reason to congratulate 
themselves upon the good fortune that has come to them. 

But there are others in the State who should be equally 
glad today, and these are the parents. The high schools 
come into closer contact with them than do either of the 
other classes of schools that are so fittingly represented 
here today. When the little ones first started out for 
school, aside from the momentary sadness over the fact 
that they were growing older, parents gave themselves 
little uneasiness about them. They were of that age 
where, in a sensible household, they were not denied 
that inestimable right of prompt obedience and the nor- 
mal child is ready to render this when parents and teachers 
are reasonable and live according to that fundamental 
principle that he who can not govern himself is abso- 
lutely unfit to govern others. When the children went 
to college and the inevitable break in the family circle 
came, they had had four years of preparatory work; their 
habits of thought, their methods of study, their general out- 
look on life and its activities were fairly well fixed. They 
had reached either the last years of adolescence or the 
beginnings of maturity and were not so susceptible to the 
changes that affected them in earlier years. 

But in the high school our pupils are neither adults nor 
little children and the physical changes that obtain to this 
period bring mental disturbances that must be handled 
with consummate skill. In addition to that, we draw 
our pupils from every stratum of society. There as- 
semble together the rich and the poor, the children of 



28 The University of the State of New York 

native-born Americans and those whose parents came 
from across the seas. With different ideals, in many 
cases without any well-defined standard of an upright, 
courteous life, they flock to us across the chasm that sep- 
arates grammar school from high school, for instruction 
and guidance. And the parents begin to flock to us, 
too, for they are soon facing the real problems in their 
children's lives. I venture the assertion that more parents 
whose hearts are suddenly awakened and made solicitous 
about their boys and girls visit the high schools than ever 
go to grammar school or college. Your " Norman " or 
your " Elizabeth " did well before coming to us — were 
stars in fact — at least that is what you tell us and we 
believe you. But now they are doing poorly and what 
is the trouble? The shadow on father's face deepens 
as you tell him what you know and mother's eyes glisten 
with unshed tears when you kindly reveal to her the truth. 
This happens all over the State and the common interest 
of parents and teachers draws them very closely together 
as they become one in aim, one in hope and, in a majority 
of cases, thank God, one in fulfilled desire. It follows 
then that every effort to augment the efficiency of the 
high school, to add to its cohesive power, to increase its 
attractiveness and influence touches the hearts of parents 
and they join with the rest of us today in expressions of 
gladness that the new President of The University of 
the State of New York wishes as earnestly as do they, 
that our pupils, their children, may get all that is possible 
out of their high school courses. 

Doctor Finley, in behalf of the high schools of the 
State, whose representative I have the honor to be, I bring 
to you messages of good will, assurances of steadfast alle- 
giance, heartfelt pledges of unswerving loyalty. We 



Inauguration Proceedings 29 

deem it providential that you are here. Journalism with 
its well-nigh unlimited powers could not retain you. 
" Old Nassau," great in her attractiveness as she is and 
always will be, could not hold you. The metropolis 
that binds to itself so many men, young and old, with the 
charm of its magnificent opportunities was obliged to 
loosen its grasp upon you, notwithstanding your great 
successes there. You, with your mental acumen, your 
resolute personality, belonged to the Empire State and we 
are profoundly grateful that the call to service, service 
which is the distinguishing spirit of this twentieth century, 
met with your self-abnegating response — " Here am I, 
send me." 



ADDRESS BY A. R. BRUBACHER 

Superintendent of Schools, Schenectady 

IN BEHALF OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 

I count it a distinguished honor to speak for elementary 
education today, when you take command of the educa- 
tional forces of New York State. This is an auspicious 
occasion. It is a new beginning and beginnings invari- 
ably suggest foundations. Elementary education is the 
foundation upon which all teaching rests. In it, there- 
fore, we expect stability, permanence; it gives us the 
feeling of worthwhileness. 1 he beginning of elementary 
education, furthermore, is at the source where the school 
draws from the home. Here we meet the home with all 
its influences. The elementary school carries on the edu- 
cating stream as it comes over from the home; not a new 
stream, not a fountain in itself, but a continuation of what 
was begun de novo by the mother at the cradle. 

The home under certain conditions may be self-suffi- 
cient as an educating agency. Such, I believe, was the 
home of the American Indian, for example. The father 
and mother could transmit to the youthful Indian boy 
and girl all the inheritances of the tribe. The domestic 
relations and duties, the tribal customs and tribal duties, 
the tribal mysteries, the tribal spirit, in brief, the entire 
social heritage was efficiently handed down by the 
home without the intermediary school. The youth was 
thus admitted into his group, fully equipped to do his 
duty as a social unit. This home education was, how- 
ever, purely social rather than industrial, and the familiar 
story of Indian life shows that it produced a race con- 



32 The University) of the Stale of Nev> York 

sciousness, a tribal solidarity, that is amazing to our con- 
ventional scholasticism. Those methods seldom or never 
failed to make good Indians, Indians that were loyal to 
their tribe and nation, brave warriors, cunning followers 
of the warpath. Those educational methods produced 
almost perfect social efficiency from the Indian point of 
view. May we not learn something from it, therefore, 
that will teach us how to make good American citizens 
from our point of view? 

That part of education which may be included under 
the term " training," training for skill of hand, accuracy, 
skill in community activities, was likewise given by the 
primitive home. Woodcraft, habits of wild animals, the 
cunning of the hunter, the duties and hardships of the 
warpath, weaving, basketry, the care of campfire and 
tepee, that individual efficiency which constituted, col- 
lectively, the tribal skill and cunning, what we may call 
with seeming anachronism a primitive industrialism, was 
handed down from father to son and mother to daughter. 
This is life in simplest terms. 

But life does not long remain so simple. Human 
progress has become written history. Human joy and 
suffering, human aspiration and passion, have created 
literature. The struggle for existence has developed ma- 
chinery. Commerce necessitates intricate processes. The 
heritage of the race has imbedded itself in books. Edu- 
cation has become a matter of technic. Training for 
industry and commerce has to do with formulas and intri- 
cate mechanical devices. The modern civilized home 
necessarily fails to provide this education and training. 
Industry is now so minutely specialized that one home can 
practise only a small fractional part of it. Consequently 
the home is unable to give much if any of the training for 



Inauguration Proceedings 33 

industry. And much of the education required to guar- 
antee social efficiency is likewise beyond the powers and 
abilities of parents. There has been, therefore, a con- 
tinual taking over of responsibility from the home by the 
school as an institution. So pronounced has this move- 
ment been, that we sometimes charge the home with 
neglect and complain that the school attempts too much. 
Certain it is, that the school is now an indispensable sup- 
plement to the home and in many cases it has become a 
substitute for the home. The school as a supplement 
of the home has absorbed, and usurped, and relieved the 
educational responsibilities of the home. It depends upon 
your point of view : 

1 The school first of all relieved the home of the 
teaching of all those conventional and technical matters 
which have to do with the mechanics of education — 
reading, number, geography, history, art, science. 

2 It has assumed a measure of responsibility regarding 
the health of children, partly in self-defense, partly in 
relief of the unfortunate home conditions. It has recently 
been said that parents are so absorbed in the struggle for 
social and material advantage that they fail to notice 
that their children can not see, that they can not hear, 
that they can not breathe, that they do not eat as children 
should and what they should. 

3 It has accepted responsibility to teach the art of 
homemaking, because the home often can not, sometimes 
will not, teach it. 

4 It has assumed responsibility to teach trades be- 
cause the modern organization of industry and labor 
makes it impossible for the home to do so. 

5 It assumes to give occupational direction because the 
home can not readily secure necessary data to this end. 



34 The University of the State of Ner» York 

6 It is now considering its duties toward the child in 
matter of sex hygiene. If the home can not, or will not, 
the school will teach sex hygiene in some form. It can 
at any rate teach the biological basis of sex. 

7 The school has assumed joint responsibility with the 
home for the education for citizenship. 

I believe, Mr Commissioner, that the school is justified 
in accepting these responsibilities. It could not, without 
dereliction of duty, give up a single function. It may 
have unduly overloaded its curriculum. It has over- 
loaded it. But the remedy lies not in subtraction of 
function. I believe the remedy lies rather in the read- 
justment of detail. I am bold to suggest two points 
where elementary education is weak in the hope that your 
happy administration, born this day, may set itself the 
high task of readjustment and perhaps new definition. 

In the first place, we overemphasize the mechanics of 
education. The elementary school has placed undue 
emphasis upon the mechanical processes of education. I 
mean reading, writing, number, drawing, memorizing, 
have been set up as ends in themselves. This is a natural 
consequence but not a necessary or wise one. Reading and 
writing are mechanical processes which prepare persons 
for education; they are the tools of education, but they 
are not themselves the end sought — knowledge. Arith- 
metic is the mechanical basis for computation and reason- 
ing. As an end in itself, it is merely a means of traffic. 
Its educational value lies in the power of reason which 
it fosters. Or, to quote from the Republic of Plato, 
"how elegant it is (arithmetic) if one applies it for the 
sake of knowledge, and not to make a traffic by it." 
Geography, merely used as a means of location, as earth- 
feature, with no reference to human relation, is purely 



Inauguration Proceedings 35 

mechanical. It is an instrument of education, but it is 
not itself education. Drawing is merely manual dex- 
terity and as such is only training, not education. His- 
tory, treated as a record of events, as a series of national 
achievements, devoted largely to chronology, is mechan- 
ical, and as such merely outlines a skeleton, giving it 
neither body nor life. As such it is not education. 

Teaching these mechanical features of education has 
some value but it is poor stuff at best. It gives a cer- 

tain expertness in the use of these tools, but it gives no 
grand purpose, no ultimate life direction. All this will 
be changed when we recognize these processes as proc- 
esses and strive for knowledge through them. Through 
reading we must reach through literature to life. Through 
the science of number we must strive to gain the power 
of reason and so attain knowledge. Through geography 
we must teach man's relation to earth-nature, and the 
dependence and interdependence between social groups. 
Through history we must teach human causation and 
human responsibility as elements in national and racial 
progress. It is hardly necessary to say here that the best 
teaching is now humanizing the curriculum of the elemen- 
tary school. But public opinion is still clamoring for the 
material husks in the name of reading, writing and arith- 
metic. The real spiritual value behind the process is 
largely lost. I long, therefore, for a new definition of 
elementary education which shall formulate for the com- 
mon man that simple philosophy of life which the mini- 
mum of education can give. 

In the second place, we need a doctrine of duty. 
Elementary education is as yet almost wholly uncon- 
scious that manners and morals are a legitimate part of 
its field. The schools are still exclusively interested in 
2 



36 The University of the State of Neiv York 

individual efficiency. In fact efficiency as applied to 
the product of the schools, signifies the ability of boys 
and girls to make a living. It has little or no regard for 
their ability to perform the many necessary duties in their 
social group. Whether we intended it or not, efficiency 
means ability to get ahead industrially at all cost. Effi- 
ciency regards individual success without regard for com- 
mon welfare, sometimes to the detriment of the common- 
wealth. Our ideal of efficiency is actually destroying 
social efficiency, because we teach no doctrine of duties. 

The Indian youth became an efficient member of his 
social group because he learned thoroughly his duties to 
the tribe. Duty became a habit for him. His faithful- 
ness to these duties produced the characteristic tribal 
solidarity which astounded civilization. We, on the con- 
trary, teach no doctrine of duty in the schools, and the 
home is not notably efficient in this respect, I fear. Be- 
tween an exaggerated conception of individual efficiency 
and this neglect to teach a list of specific duties we must 
approach social disintegration. 

Or can the home still teach this necessary basis of 
social ethics? Can it teach civic duty? Can it give the 
basis of duty so as to produce both community and 
national solidarity? What are the facts in the case? 

Capital is at war with labor. Antagonism prevails 
between these two component parts of every modern com- 
munity, neither being ready to acknowledge its duty to 
the other or to the community at large. 

The electorate displays great lethargy. Rarely do 
we have more than 60 per cent of the total vote cast; 
commonly do we cast only 85 per cent even of the en- 
rolled vote. This indicates an ominous disregard for 
civic duty, a gross sin in a democracy. 



Inauguration Proceedings 37 

The vote is still to some extent venal, showing a low 
ethical tone. 

Municipal government is notoriously inefficient, and 
sometimes corrupt. The electorate is unconscious of duty 
and responsibility, else this could not be. 

The citizenship, as a body, lacks civic pride. It is 
still insensible of slums, of improper housing conditions, 
of vice, and too often of poverty. 

Popular amusement demands are disgustingly low, 
proving a low community morality and vulgarity in 
manners. 

This list is quite sufficient to prove that the home does 
not effectively teach either social or civic duty and that 
it does not give an adequate basis of manners and morals. 
It is not difficult to assign some important reasons for our 
present low ethical state. In most urban communities to- 
day 50 per cent of the homes are foreign, thus repre- 
senting the varying ethical standards of from two to a 
dozen different European races and nations. These 
races, moreover, have left behind in Europe those com- 
munity restraints, those national and legal and church re- 
strictions which tended to maintain high ethical standards. 
These restraints are inoperative in their new world homes. 
In a considerable number of cases, this new world home 
is temporary, a matter of adventure. The family will 
return to Europe. At best then, ethical instability is a 
characteristic of these foreign homes. By leaving the 
teaching of the common social and civic duties to these 
homes, we leave our ethical standards as a nation to the 
uncertain influences of Sicilian, Slavonian, Hungarian, 
Greek, Polish and other agencies. We may as well 
admit it, we have at present no standards. We have no 
American manners, morals, or ethics. Every large city 



38 The University of the State of New York 

of the land is today cosmopolitan rather than American. 
In the course of time we shall of course evolve some com- 
mon standard out of the present anomalous conditions, 
but it will be at the expense of much that is worth saving 
in our nineteenth century morality and subject our present 
institutions to tremendous strain. 

But even the American home as a type is not teaching 
a doctrine of duty to its children. It is a notorious fact, 
any teacher will tell you, that children from American 
homes are often disobedient, often ill-mannered, some- 
times disrespectful, tardy, usually irreverent. They rec- 
ognize no duty to others, are disrespectful to parents, have 
little regard for public property, assume that the world 
owes them a living; life is conceived by them to be a 
good time. 

Here then is another case where the home can no 
longer do its duty as originally conceived. It has be- 
come impossible for the home to make good Indians. As 
the school has recently taken over the teaching of home- 
making, so must it now take over the teaching of ethics 
and the sooner we do it the better for the country. 

Social efficiency absolutely demands of the elementary 
school the teaching of the common social duties. Each 
grade of children can be taught the concrete ethical stand- 
ard suitable to its age. Beginning with duty to parents, 
teacher and schoolmates, duty to the weak, aged, help- 
less, we can go on to teach respect for public property, 
for holy men and sacred things ; duty to state and nation, 
love for country and efficient citizenship. But this con- 
crete teaching is merely a beginning. After a duty is 
seen in the concrete, its doctrine must be formulated and 
the child must be given an easy rule of behavior to carry 
with him into life. 



Inauguration Proceedings 39 



I look forward, therefore, with joyful hope, Mr Com- 
missioner, to the time when you will seize the opportunity 
to incorporate in the body of instruction of every ele- 
mentary school of this State a course in ethics, informal 
for the little ones, more and more formal for the older, 
always based upon concrete human behavior. Its im- 
portance should take equal rank with history and Eng- 
lish. Out of such instruction I confidently expect to see 
the growth of a new civic strength. By it the new races 
in our midst will be more readily assimilated; common 
standards of good manners and high morality will be es- 
tablished; and through it the State of New York will 
create a communal solidarity that will recall the beautiful 
racial strength which we call cunning in the American 
Indian, but which will be the basis of a new righteousness 
in the American nation that is to be. 



ADDRESS BY CALVIN N. KENDALL 

Commissioner of Education of New Jersey 

IN BEHALF OF EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENTS OF OTHER 

STATES 

In behalf of state superintendents and commissioners 
of education, it is my privilege to extend greetings. 

Your coming to this office is an event not only in New 
York, but an event in which very many persons outside 
are deeply interested. What you do here, the ideals you 
set up, your success in their accomplishment, are not with- 
out their effect in other and even distant states. 

While we lack a national system of education, there 
are numerous forces at work for solidarity of educational 
interests. When one state gains, all may profit. We 
are confident that today our assets are increased. 

At a time when educational opinion seems to be un- 
settled, when increased responsibilities are being thrown 
upon the schools, when the need of intelligence in citizen- 
ship was never greater, when the fine faith in education 
was never stronger, all the more is our right to look to 
New York, the commanding commonwealth, for leader- 
ship. No greater opportunity in education exists in 
America than is yours, Sir; this is sober language; at 
least this is the opinion of those of us who look on. Nor 
are we forgetful of the fine achievements already made 
here. 

Those of us who work in similar fields believe that you, 
with your associates, will make sound and permanent con- 
tributions to public education. In consequence, our tasks 
may not be easier, but they may be more intelligently 
done. 



42 The University of the State of New York 

Not unmindful of what has been done here, who would 
not wish to see worked out, with your great resources, 
plans for the adequate training and recognition of teach- 
ers; the realization of the possibilities of the rural school; 
ample and well-balanced industrial education; the effi- 
cient training of the minority as well as the majority in 
both city and country ; a program that would substantially 
recognize, amidst the hurry and restlessness of contem- 
porary life, the value of spiritual resources as capital for 
the individual; means for educating the layman to a 
substantial realization that the good and comprehensive 
schools he demands must cost a great deal of money? 

The working out of these and other problems, perhaps 
equally great, can not be the work of a single man, how- 
ever competent in action ; of a single year, however fruit- 
ful in achievement; of a single legislative session, how- 
ever public-spirited in motive. No one should expect 
this, for in educational progress allowances must be made 
for tradition, for public opinion, and for the fact that 
processes in education are not always susceptible of defi- 
nition or measurement. 

But there is an old saying that a wise man will make 
more opportunities than he finds. We believe that you 
are that wise man. 

There are some of us who feel that your willingness 
to transfer your activities to the field of elementary edu- 
cation, as did also your distinguished predecessor in office, 
is an indication of the growing appreciation of the im- 
portance of public education as a means of service for 
highly trained men. No service needs able, forceful men 
more. What ordinary public work presents greater op- 
portunities for usefulness, if not for distinction? 



Inauguration Proceedings 43 

It is a long way, in one sense, from the one-room 
school, amidst your beautiful hills and valleys, to the 
great secondary schools, colleges and universities in the 
centers of population ; but in another sense the way is not 
long, for each of these, whether conspicuous or incon- 
spicuous, makes or is capable of making its own contri- 
bution. 

And the work is with the multitude, and with the 
multitude young. 

Most of this work is quiet, of the sort that can not be 
heralded in newspapers, but it is none the less steady, 
positive and effective. In the aggregate, the sum of the 
daily, hourly contact between teachers and taught is by 
far the greatest force for righteousness and well-being 
that exists in this or in any other state. 

Of course it could be better. No one knows this so 
well, perhaps, as those of us who are in the thick of it. 
It is the comprehension of the possibilities of the schools, 
the vision of their resources, yet unworked, that makes 
educational service supremely interesting. In the differ- 
ence between the ideal and the actual is the opportunity. 

Possibly some such unconscious feeling as this inspires 
you as you take this office. 

Beyond the confines of this notable building, which 
typifies the faith of your people in education, the real op- 
portunity lies in the promotion of sound and efficient edu- 
cation for the million and a half young people available 
for education, and not merely for some of them, but for 
all of them. The consciousness of your accomplish- 
ments for them, imperfect as all human achievements 
must be, will perhaps afford you the most durable satis- 
factions amidst the perplexities and burdens, and even 



44 The University of the State of New York 

the honors which attach themselves to large administra- 
tive positions in education. 

You come to your work with a breadth of experience 
and training which, with your real human qualities, will 
compel success; such is our opinion. 

As a native of this State, educated in its schools, whose 
interest therefore in this occasion is not merely academic 
or professional, it is my privilege to extend congratula- 
tions to you on behalf of those engaged elsewhere in work 
similar to your own here, and to extend also congratula- 
tions, just as sincere, to the people of this State, that the 
leadership of their great interests of public education falls 
today into such competent hands. 



ADDRESS BY WILLIAM CHURCH OSBORN 

IN BEHALF OF THE CITIZENS OF THE STATE 

The Indian League of the Five Nations founded its 
successful policy upon assemblages of the sachems, chiefs 
and people, to discuss matters of public concern. With 
easy fancy we may say that to us, their pale face inherit- 
ors, has gone forth the white wampum and that we are 
assembled in general council in our long house, not five 
nations and meager numbers but as the many peoples and 
many millions that comprise the complicated fabric of 
the State of New York. 

We are here to elevate a sachem for the teaching of 
our young men and maidens and our talk is of our chil- 
dren and our State, for the children of today are the state 
of tomorrow. 

By the intimation of your program I am here to repre- 
sent the people of the State. In doing so it would be 
easy for me to occupy my time and the afternoon in praise 
of the great educational institutions developed by your 
Regents and by the untiring efforts of that great educator 
and rugged character, the late Dr Andrew S. Draper. 

These are progressive times, however, and we men and 
women of the Empire State do not rest satisfied with our 
achievements ; we go forward toward the light, with cour- 
age, our spirits aflame with the " divine discontent." 
Hence I shall be recreant to my charge if I speak not 
plainly of those conditions of our educational system which 
need consideration, but I beg you to believe that my 
words are "the faithful wounds of a friend." We 
approve our Department of Education and mean to sup- 
port and sustain it with vigor and with liberality. 



46 The University of the State of Ner» York 

The Department of Education has the defect of its 
virtues. It has built up a magnificent system of educa- 
tion and it may well say, " Why change that which is so 
good?" Yet if you consider the needs of our people, 
and the response of this Department, you will feel per- 
haps with me that there is danger that the Department 
will regard its system as in itself a permanent objective in- 
stead of as a transitory means to meet our various and 
shifting needs. I think that the Department lacks adap- 
tability to the special needs of special cases; that it does 
not sufficiently regard the variations in educational policy 
required by local interests; that it applies its system too 
generally to all classes of people forgetting or overlook- 
ing the fact that the training which is best for industrial 
elements of our population may not fit the rural districts 
and that few need fitting for the scholastic life though the 
opportunity should be open to all. There is a tendency 
not to move with the great movements of popular thought 
and a willingness to wait until the public consciousness 
has insisted upon changes instead of taking the natural 
position of leadership which its central authority entails. 
For example, if you examine the training afforded to 
those who are to be certified teachers in our rural schools, 
you will find that the problems of country life are scarcely 
treated and that a certified teacher for these schools may 
well come to his or her class without realizing that the 
cultural value of the laws of organic and animal growth 
is as great as training in the laws of the Greeks and 
Romans and that the mental discipline following a study 
of the problems of farm chemistry may be as great as 
that attendant upon geometry. As a result, the rural 
school course, as I have seen it in operation, is little other 
than a glorified edition of the three R's. You might call 



Inauguration Proceedings 47 

it the three R's extra illustrated. While I do not dis- 
parage that venerable trinity, I think that overworship at 
their shrine leads to the shop, the counter, the office and 
the clerkship instead of to the plow, the hammer, the tool 
and the producer. 

We do not urge that our schools, either common or 
high, should turn out specialists in agriculture or me- 
chanics. We ask an education to fit us for our share in 
the time spirit and the time duty. We realize that edu- 
cation is barren which does not produce intelligence, for 
intelligence and character are the true foundations of the 
democratic state. 

Never in history has democracy turned in directions 
so sure to strain the general intelligence as in recent years. 

If I correctly view the tendency of the times, it is 
to substitute associated effort for individual leadership. 
Thus the development of labor is in the direction of syn- 
dicalism or ownership and management by labor of the 
industries in which the laborers are engaged, analogous 
in some respects to the ancient guilds. In politics the 
people are turning away from individual leadership and 
representation and are placing their confidence in direct 
action by the people, as in the direct primaries, the initia- 
tive and the referendum. In agriculture the tendency of 
the times is toward cooperative buying and cooperative 
selling. In all these ways the people show their de- 
termination to manage their own affairs by association. 
I believe in these movements, I believe in their perma- 
nence, in their value to the people of the State, in their 
propriety as substitutes for the egotistic individualism 
which has brought about the unequal distribution of 
wealth and power of the day, in their safety as a bulwark 
against the encroaching folly of the socialist state, but I 



48 The University of the State of New York 

believe that with these changes must go a corresponding 
preparation and that a large share of the responsibility 
of that preparation must rest upon the Department of 
Education. In what form, by what method and with 
what spirit the Department shall meet these great prob- 
lems is beyond my present scope of knowledge or sug- 
gestion, and I count the State fortunate that in this chang- 
ing time it has called to the leadership of its Department 
of Education a man whose record and whose character 
show a spirit equal to the emergencies of the time, a 
freshness of observation, a sympathy of nature, a clear 
and firm purpose which lead us to believe confidently in 
his future and in our future under his guidance. For we 
do not look to the Department to sit by until the con- 
sciousness of educational needs and the development of 
the life of the people shall force our educational leaders 
into action. We look to our educational authorities for 
inspiration and for leadership. 

We have set you, Doctor Finley, on a high place ; show 
us your vision; point out our paths, mark our perils and 
remember for us as was said of old that " where no wise 
guidance is, the people falleth." 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS BY JOHN HUSTON 
FINLEY 

President of The University of the State of New York 
and Commissioner of Education 

Mr Governor, Mr Chancellor, Members of the Board of 
Regents, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

This is not a celebration of an accession to office. It 
is of an investiture with one of the most sacred of re- 
sponsibilities this State can put upon a man — the care, 
under its laws, of its most precious possession. Accept- 
ing this investiture, I but widen the horizon of the pledge 
that I gave ten years ago to the city of New York and 
its college — a pledge that I can keep without disloyalty 
to that city and that college which have been all my 
world and now continue a part of it — and I speak my 
deepened, strengthened faith in the succeeding, despite 
all the obvious failures, of the sublime endeavor of a 
democratic people to rise to nobler, happier life through 
the education of its children. I carried into my office a 
few days ago the image of a youth who typifies to me that 
great host through whom this State has this hope. What 
I would have for him I would have for his generation. 
He is the witness of my pledge, the hostage of my faith. 

What I shall say will give no intimation of policy or 
of detail of purpose. I shall endeavor merely and 
briefly to make visible to you, as I see it, this structure 
whose foundation was laid in the ashes of the Revolution, 
by Clinton, Hamilton, Duane and L'Hommedieu, and 
whose columns have risen through the labors and plans 
of many, directed by that master builder, Dr Andrew S. 



50 The University of the State of New York 

Draper — this structure which was for a century or more 
two structures, built upon the one foundation, University 
and Department, but which has again become one in the 
nobler architecture of a unified design. Some of you will 
think of it as a " department," some as a " university " 
— this " one great system of administration and super- 
vision," as President Butler has just called it; it matters 
little what name you put uppermost, if only you see its 
mighty significance, its durable purpose. And I care 
not whether you think of me as "Commissioner" or 
" President," or without title, for I have no ambition save 
to serve the State as best I can in this office, if only with 
you of the universities and colleges, you of the secondary 
and elementary schools, and you of the citizenry of this 
Commonwealth, I can make potent the State's desire. 

The Five Nations who once occupied the valleys con- 
verging within sight of these hills, called themselves, ac- 
cording to Chateaubriand, the " Men of Always." But, 
as he adds, they have passed on, to expire on the same 
shore on which they landed in unknown ages, and have 
left in these valleys only the " mould of their graves," 
the implements and bones of their ephemeral existence. 
Among their sepulchers has come another race of men, 
who though conscious of their bodily mortality yet cher- 
ish a faith in the immortality of that which they call 
" the state," that " invisible multitude of the spirits of 
yesterday and tomorrow," as the Iron Chancellor once 
defined a " true people " — the invisible multitude of the 
spirits of yesterday and tomorrow associated in the 
memories and purposes of today. 

And the most confident expression of that faith of the 
race, which has followed the aboriginal race, is the school, 
the school maintained out of the common treasure of these 



Inauguration Proceedings 51 

new " men of always," the school in which they attempt 
to remember, to keep in their minds and hearts, the best 
of yesterday, the school in whose tuitions they pray, with 
sacrifice many of them, over half of the days in every 
year, for the unending tomorrow, not of their individual 
selves, dearly as they may desire personal immortality, 
but of their collective selves, the state. 

So I have come in the few days of my service here, 
in this Department, this institution, whose invisible walls 
follow the boundaries of this Commonwealth, this great 
school existent in the State's thousands of schools of 
memory and of discipline — I have come to think of it 
as the remembering and aspiring soul of the State, as 
the University of the Men of Always, for without that 
which it signifies there is no durable state. 

This may seem to some an idealistic definition, a 
fantastic characterization. And, I must confess that I 
should myself have so regarded such a definition only a 
few months ago; not that the institution has undergone 
a metamorphosis, but that I have come to see what its 
inner significance is. 

I saw it, as no doubt thousands saw it and still see it, 
as a standardizing, policing, regulating, sometimes re- 
pressive, and always appraising, agency of the State, lead- 
ing the child from the home or the street into the school; 
reproving, punishing, even imprisoning, negligent or avari- 
cious parents or guardians; adjudicating disputes between 
school trustees and school teachers; questioning hundreds 
of thousands of pupils in the schools every year and mark- 
ing with meticulous and critical hand their millions of 
answers; apportioning State moneys, amassing valuable 
books, collecting precious fragments of earth, and mak- 
ing helpful reports; and, finally, admitting to professional 



52 The University of the State of Nev> York 

study, or to the practice of certain professions or the pur- 
suit of certain occupations. 

These are some of the prosaic activities which doubt- 
less led that distinguished man of letters, George Wil- 
liam Curtis, Chancellor of this University a quarter of a 
century ago, to say of it that it was " invested with no 
more romance than the Department of Public Instruc- 
tion," which was then a dissociate, coordinate adminis- 
trative agency. 

But the University which his two surviving associates 
in the Board of Regents, Chancellor McKelway and 
Vice Chancellor Sexton, have lived to see, and which 
they, with other men of like public spirit from all parts 
of the State, have notably aided to develop, has an 
incomparable romance among world universities. For 
in the unification of its former functions with those of 
the Department of Public Instruction, both of which 
apart seemed so prosaic, it is now in the very universality 
of its concern a university in a new sense, for it embraces 
in its thought the whole range of education, from the 
training of the nurse who receives the new-born child, to 
the researches of the scientist who lives out upon the 
utmost verges of the known. Lord Haldane, whose re- 
cent visit to America has given us such gratification, said 
to the people of England something which intimates that 
he has felt the impressiveness of the infinities of the sys- 
tems of education represented by this University through 
its Regents and Commissioner: " It is only by showing 
that your elementary teaching is linked to something be- 
yond, and that that something beyond is linked to some- 
thing yet beyond, that you will ever be able to awaken 
among our people that spirit of progress which distin- 
guishes the United States at the present moment." * The 



Inauguration Proceedings 53 

universities must be not merely detachable superstructures, 
but the . . . intelligence which penetrates the whole 
system." An institution which gives that sense of con- 
tinuity which, through public school and private univers- 
ity and research institute, is helping man to live, as the 
great German philosopher Eucken would have him live, 
not simply in the world, but in the vast eternity of the 
universe, takes its place among the highest conceptions 
of a republic. 

For myself, seeing for the first time the reality of this 
University instead of its externality, I had such an experi- 
ence as the philosopher William James had when, travel- 
ing alone in the mountains of North Carolina, he suddenly 
became aware from a remark made by his mountaineer 
driver, that the clearings which the settlers had made for 
their homesteads, and which had seemed to him, the 
philosopher, but a moment before, denuded spots in the 
midst of the forests, filled with charred stumps and girdled 
leafless trees, were to those who made these clearings 
symbols " redolent of moral memories," and " sang peans 
of duty, struggle and success." The little schoolhouse 
plots, which are now this University's first concern, are 
democracy's reservations or " clearings " in the midst of 
her vast private domain. And some of them seem, es- 
pecially when unoccupied, as ugly and dreary of external 
aspect as the clearings which the great philosopher found 
in the North Carolina mountains. But when they are 
viewed in their inner, eternal significance, when they are 
seen as the expression of a common longing for the happier 
existence of those who come after, of an aspiration for a 
more perfect state, they become sacred inclosures; they 
are ever rehearsing the race's " moral memories," they 
are singing peans of the race's progress. 



54 The University of the State of New York 

Walking, myself, several years ago among the moun- 
tains of Porto Rico, I met a man bearing on his shoulder 
up a long hill what seemed to me at first only a basket 
or box filled with red flowers, but what I soon saw to hold 
also the dead body of his child, which in lonesome jour- 
ney he was carrying to burial in consecrated ground two 
miles away. There is no more beautiful or appealing 
picture, among all my memories, of the faith that looks 
to individual immortality beyond. But within the last 
month I have found another to put beside it. It has 
come to me, reflecting upon the first or second order 
which I issued as Commissioner. The picture is of the 
State carrying a child in its arms through the snows of a 
northern hill to one of its plots consecrated to the per- 
petuation of its ideals, here among the living, to the en- 
nobling and perfecting of the race upon earth. 

These thousands of tracts in their uses — the State's 
white acres, I have often visualized them — fronting 
highway and street, the threads of common land, which 
hold us together, it is the duty of this University, through 
its executive officers, to supervise. It is not to lessen but 
to strengthen the sense of local responsibility and local 
initiative in the governance and cultivation of these " white 
acres " that this general oversight is provided by the 
State. It is to give each the help of all; and yet not to 
make a uniform standardized " all " but to encourage 
and assist each to develop in its own best way. 

I have found no better or more graphic visualization of 
the relationship of the State, in its University, to the 
inhabitants of these tracts than the ancient theory of 
Democritus and Lucretius as to the communication of 
sound and light and thought. 



Inauguration Proceedings 55 

They assumed that every object, every thought, was 
constantly giving off images or idols or films of itself, with 
the result that the atmosphere came to be constantly filled 
with millions of these images; images, first, of the physical 
objects that were traversed by the subtler images of 
men's thoughts, and these in turn by the subtlest of all 
images, the majestic thoughts of the gods. And I think 
of this agency of the State, with its central library, its 
central museum, its central collection of photographs of 
the world's art, its tens of thousands of transcripts of what 
we would keep in the memory of the race — I think of 
it, so furnished, as the source of the majestic desires of 
this State for the good of every child in it, traversing the 
atmosphere from the sea to Niagara, and making them- 
selves visible wherever the image of a child's thought or 
a youth's ambition, faces the mystery of life in one of 
these little plots. 

How literally this is true is apparent in the fact that 
the State not only cares for the nurture of the child's 
mind through the teaching, and sends its thoughts through 
commissioner, superintendent and inspector, but is actually 
giving to the children in each of these plots, the physical 
images, books, photographs, lantern slides, which are 
available to all the students in the University. So, Lord 
Haldane's desire for an all-penetrating and all-pervading 
university that will appeal to the interest of a people has 
support in this ancient theory of physics and metaphysics, 
and in this modern realization and visualization in fact. 
For are the best thoughts and highest desires of men not 
the majestic images of the gods? 

Nor is the State visiting in its thought the child alone, 
or the child in its work alone. Last year the Legisla- 
ture made it possible for the districts to put these little 



56 The University of the State of New York 

tracts to fuller community uses, in giving authority for 
the designation of these as sites not only for schoolhouses, 
but for playgrounds, or for " agricultural, athletic center 
and social center purposes," and for " other uses per- 
taining to the welfare of the community." They are to 
grow first that discipline and control and respect for 
others, which are, above all else, needed in our republic, 
but they may develop side by side with these a higher 
community happiness, and a greater community pride, a 
more helpful neighborliness whose human values, what 
with urban indifference and rural loneliness, we are 
missing in so many parts of the State. 

And there is still another phase of State concern which 
is now to have expression. Last year provision was made 
by law for the medical inspection of all the children at- 
tending the schools of the State. What this means has 
been represented, though unwittingly, by Mr Low in 
one of his mural paintings which have just been installed 
in the rotunda of this building (and are to be seen for 
the first time in place today). It shows the ancient 
Greek physician, Aesculapius, the god of medicine, sit- 
ting opposite a child, one hand holding an hourglass, the 
other feeling the pulse of the child. What is here por- 
trayed in classic illustration is what is practically planned 
by this great Stale for the conservation of the health of all 
its children. The figure of Aesculapius is but the per- 
sonification of that conserving concern of this Common- 
wealth, its hand upon the pulse of every school child 
within its borders. And when it is known, furthermore, 
that not a new school building, outside of the larger 
cities, can be built until the plans — showing provi- 
sion for light, air and ventilation, and against fire — 
have been approved by an officer of this University (and 



Inauguration Proceedings 57 

I hope that his approval of the architecture may also be 
some day required), it will be appreciated what a con- 
structive as well as conserving policy the State has made 
possible for its University. 

But it is not alone these thousands of school plots with 
their ever changing millions, plots whose reservation for 
the common schools this University was the foremost to 
promote ; it is not these alone that the University has now 
in continuous care. Exactly one hundred and thirty 
years ago this very beginning of January, Governor 
George Clinton, in a message to the Legislature sitting 
in the capital city, in whose " half-charred and neglected 
streets the trees had been cut down and the ruined build- 
ings had been left unrestored," said : " Perhaps there is 
scarce anything more worthy of your attention than the 
revival and encouragement of seminaries of learning." 
In that unpromising, squalid "clearing," to take philos- 
opher James's figure again for the moment, (which is 
now the resplendent New York City) this University 
had its origin. It might have been — she might have 
been — an Alma Mater with children of her own within 
ivied walls, exuberant undergraduates shouting her name 
endearingly. But she was destined by an early dissen- 
sion that has given us the great Columbia University, with 
President Low and President Butler (who in themselves 
and their service to the world would have justified any 
dissension) to become a mother not of students but of 
corporations; seminaries of learning, universities, colleges, 
academies, libraries, museums, scientific associations; her- 
self immortal, giving birth to immortal creatures only. 

She has no mortal collegiate children of her own, as 
have the state universities of the West and South; and 
while she has maternal prerogative, sometimes disputed, 



58 The University) of the State of New York 



she never exercises it save in rare cases of delinquency on 
the part of her immortal children; but upon the insistent 
advice of Doctor Draper, which the State a few days 
before his death permitted her to follow, she is to select 
within the next four years three thousand of the most 
promising graduates of the academies and high schools of 
the State and help them out of her own purse (which is 
the State's treasury) to take advantage of the training 
which the universities and colleges of her nurture are able 
to give. For an ultimate annual expenditure of $300,000 
the State, through private and municipal cooperation, will 
be educating a body of undergraduates larger than that 
of many another state university spending from three to 
five times as much. 

This building is called Doctor Draper's monument. 
I am not sure that the organizing of this great body of 
university scholars is not to be his greatest monument. 
And I congratulate the State and its University that the 
Governor and Legislature have made possible the full 
initiation of this plan, so that today the University has 
already 750 scholars as freshmen in the various univers- 
ities and colleges of the State. 

President Wilson spoke of having had in thought, in 
his professional days, the " perfect place of learning," a 
place frequented by sagacious men, debaters of the 
world's questions, and used to the rough ways of democ- 
racy, a place where calm science sat ascetic, recluse 
" like a nun," " not knowing if the world passed and not 
caring if only the truth came in answer to her prayer," 
" a place where literature walked in quiet chambers, or 
with storied walls about." What he saw in his apoca- 
lyptic vision was probably a perfected Princeton or a 
glorified University of Virginia, a place of youth, and 



Inauguration Proceedings 59 

dormitories with " magic casements." But I like to think 
that this unified institution, with all its extensive cares, its 
majestic and its unwearying traversing of the State, is to 
find here at last in this beautiful and befitting house some 
of the satisfactions of the " perfect place of learning." 
Here, already, calm science sits, ascetic as a nun, undis- 
turbed by the " rough ways of democracy," yet concerned 
for it, as I discovered a few days ago in the midst of her 
researches ; here literature walks in quiet chambers and in 
the Library School interprets her storied walls of every 
language and knowledge; here sagacious men who are to 
lead democracy will come increasingly for guidance in the 
debates, that are to make this hill ever a place of com- 
manding influence; and here in time is to be the gate of 
admission to every profession or occupation which the 
State is to guard. 

So, out of this medley of powers and responsibilities, 
which seemed to me at first but a code of educational 
police regulations, a collection of administrative machin- 
ery, I have seen rise a university, as Professor Perry of 
Columbia has defined it, a university which " is a little 
state," a polis that has at heart the good of every citizen 
in the making, that has within its horizon the whole range 
of educational problems, from those which the newest im- 
migrant brings in his alien speech and tradition up the 
harbor of New York, to those which remain in the mute 
hearts of the descendants of the aborigines out upon the 
other border, a University indeed of the Men of Always. 

I have, as I have said, no other — and there can be no 
higher — ambition than to serve the greater State as Com- 
missioner or as President of this little state which exists, 
as Emerson once said the state itself existed, namely, ** to 
educate the wise man," with whose appearance both may 



60 The University of the State of NeVf York 

disappear. And I renew to you, Regents of this little 
state, and to you, Mr Governor, of the greater State, the 
oath of office which I took a month ago in the presence of 
the beloved Vice Chancellor, who, to my supreme regret, 
is prevented by illness from being here today — the oath 
to serve with all my strength and heart and mind both the 
little state and, through it, the greater State. 



REMARKS BY DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 

Chancellor McKelway: We will now have the 
pleasure of hearing from visiting friends, representatives 
of our Commonwealth and of our cities, and I shall begin 
by invoking your attention, as I am sure you will be glad 
to give it, to Senator Elihu Root. 

ELIHU Root : Mr Chancellor and gentlemen, had I 
known that I was to be called upon, respect for my old 
and valued friend, Doctor Finley, and for this great in- 
stitution of our State, would have required me to make 
due preparation. But I have not. I am reminded by 
what Doctor Finley said that 130 years ago also there 
was enacted a statute of the State of New York which 
is the basis of our educational system and that it was en- 
acted upon the report of a committee of which Alexander 
Hamilton was chairman, and that the report was drafted 
by him. My dear Doctor Finley, may I express the hope 
that upon you falls the mantle of Hamilton's genius for 
the public service. As men now observe the meaningless 
alphabet of single events which are happening from day 
to day and as under long continued and effective obser- 
vation these group themselves into words and the words 
into sentences and the sentences into chapters, we begin 
to see dimly that a great renaissance makes its appear- 
ance in the world. We are passing out of a long period 
of quiescence into a period of new things, new departures, 
new achievements, new spirit leading, we know not where. 
May the spirit of that unknown future rest upon you and 
sanctify your work to the accomplishment of its great 
purpose. The good old three R's that have been spoken 



62 The University of the State of New York 

of with slight respect today are the keys that open the 
doors of all opportunity for mankind. You are to see 
that the keys are furnished to every child and then point 
out the doors, lead the children to the doors of opportun- 
ity and teach them to use the keys that fit. As they go 
on up the ascending scale of elementary and secondary 
school and college and university it is your work to lead 
them to doorways more and more difficult to pass, so that 
everybody may find boundless opportunity for usefulness 
and public service, may fulfil in the highest degree all the 
capacities and aptitudes of their natures and may attain 
for the greatest measure of happiness that it is possible 
for them. God bless you, my dear doctor, in your work. 
Our good wishes, our hopes and our earnest help will 
always be with you. 

Chancellor McKelway: It was Rudyard Kip- 
ling, I think, who said, " The best part of this world is 
something just beyond it." Certainly the best part of 
New York is that something just beyond it, called Long 
Island. The best form for public education service is, of 
course, found in the Board of Regents. Alexander 
Hamilton has been credited with the origination of that 
Board. It was, however, enacted by the Legislature in 
1 784. Hamilton was not then even a member of the 
Legislature. The bill which became a law was intro- 
duced by Ezra L'Homedieu. He was a member of 
the State Senate from Suffolk county. Thus from Long 
Island, from which he and I came, some years apart, 
issued the act creating the Board of Regents, and from 
the same Legislature in subsequent years came the law 
creating Greater New York. The ablest mayor old 
Brooklyn ever had and the best mayor Greater New 



Inauguration Proceedings 63 



York has yet had, I now take pleasure in presenting to 
you. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you 
Seth Low. 

Seth Low: Mr Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen: 
I hope I may be permitted a personal reference at this 
moment, because twenty-four years ago this March I 
received the honorary degree of doctor of laws from the 
Chancellor of The University of the State of New York, 
then George William Curtis; so that both by my birth 
in Brooklyn and by adoption, Mr Chancellor, I feel as 
if I were at home in this presence. 

An honorary degree is not so much the recognition of 
achievement as it is like the touch of the sword of the sov- 
ereign which makes the common man rise from his knee a 
knight, subject to all the obligations of " noblesse oblige." 
The honorary degree from an institution of learning lays 
upon the man who is fortunate enough to receive it that 
same obligation of " noblesse oblige." The peculiar qual- 
ity, Doctor Finley, that emanates from The University 
of the State of New York seems to me to be this. The 
old Latin poet, you know, made one of his characters 
say that nothing human was foreign to him ; and the hon- 
orary degree of The University of the State of New 
York, and much more the presidency of the University, 
seem to me to embrace a comprehensive call to service 
that has its limit with childhood at one end only, and with 
old age at the other. As a resident of the city of New 
York, I can almost envy the State for the greater right 
that it has attained to call Doctor Finley its own ; for we 
shall miss him in the great metropolis. I should envy the 
State, but for the fact that I realize that the city is a part 
of the State, and so have the assurance that we shall con- 



64 The University of the State of Nen> York 

tinue to share in this great possession. The State has been 
fortunate enough to catch Doctor Finley while he is — 
shall I say neither young nor old? I think I would rather 
say when he is both young and old; for many years age 
it was said that " the young men should see visions and 
the old men should dream dreams;" and we like to see 
at the head of The University of the State of New York 
a man who is capable both of seeing visions and of dream- 
ing dreams of their accomplishment. I am entirely sure 
that not a person connected with the educational system 
of New York State, whether it be a child in the kinder- 
garten, or whether it be the head of a great university, 
or the administrator of a system of public schools in 
some of our cities, or a lonely teacher, not one of them 
will come in contact with this man without going back 
to his place stronger for having met him; more full of 
enthusiasm for his work, whatever it may be. In other 
words, the human quality of Doctor Finley which you 
must have noted in his inaugural address is one of the 
things that has so endeared him to the whole population 
of the City of New York. 

Your Chancellor has referred to his recent services as 
an arbitrator in a great railroad dispute. I do not know 
how any greater expression of confidence could have been 
given him than that he should have made so great an im- 
pression upon both the elements involved in that arbitra- 
tion, that, without any connection whatever with railroad- 
ing or with industrial affairs, they should have asked him 
to be one of those to settle the controversy which meant 
so much to them and to our country. Therefore, I con- 
gratulate the State that it has as the head of its educa- 
tional system a man who means so much not only to the 
humble but to the great. I congratulate our educational 



Inauguration Proceedings 65 

system that its head is a man who has made so profound 
an impression, by his sense of justice, that he should be 
summoned to that duty which he so honorably performed. 
I also think it is significant that one of the principal 
services that Doctor Finley has rendered in the city of 
New York, outside of his official relation to the College 
of the City of New York, has been rendered by him as 
the president of the New York Association for the Blind; 
an association whose motto is " Light through work." 
How typical it fortunately is that the head of the educa- 
tional system of our Empire State is a man, at whose 
heart is the burning desire to give light to the blind! I 
venture the prediction that there is no teacher in all our 
public school system so blind, that when he or she has 
come in contact with Doctor Finley they will not see, in 
the child and in the school, something finer and nobler 
and more comprehensive than they ever dreamed of be- 
fore. I also like to think that the great public, sometimes 
so blind to the truer meaning of things, will be enabled 
by this man to see in this enormous organization, this 
wonderful organization which controls the educational sys- 
tem of the State, not simply a mechanism for doing cer- 
tain pieces of work that can not be done without organiza- 
tion, but a living thing that takes the child of the State 
and makes out of him a citizen capable of doing service 
for the State. 

CHANCELLOR McKELWAY: Ladies and gentlemen, 
it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you one of the 
best productions of the educational system of our metro- 
politan city and our State, and one of the most exalted 
and trusted representatives of party purpose and educa- 
tional progress in the person of Mr McAneny, whom I 
will now introduce. 



66 The University of the State of Ner» York 

George McAnenY: Mr Chancellor and Commis- 
sioner, ladies and gentlemen: Mr Low has spoken for 
the people of the city of New York well and strongly 
and I can but echo what he has said and then perhaps add 
a word for the government of the city of New York, 
of which Doctor Finley was in a sense a member, and in 
which, therefore, we were colleagues. To bring the greet- 
ing of that government to him is indeed a rare pleasure 
and a real privilege, but I ought to tell you, if I am to be 
perfectly frank, that while we gave him up and while 
upon that ground I am entitled as the representative of 
that government to more of your sympathy than any other 
man who has spoken here today, we gave him up with re- 
luctance. The wrench cost us a great deal; and I have 
no doubt that it cost him a great deal. But the fact that 
we did give him up I am willing to submit as proof that, 
even as a city, we have our proper sense of State patriot- 
ism. It was the right thing to do and we at least find 
satisfaction in the knowledge that he will still be with us 
and near us in the work that is to be his here. He has 
been a part of the life of our city in so many ways that I 
could not begin to enumerate them. But let me tell you 
that because of all he has done for us he is now held in 
deep affection by us all and that we regard him with the 
highest respect. That that affection and respect are now 
to be shared by the people of all the State is a matter to 
me, of a great deal of private satisfaction. 

Doctor Finley left with us the product of his ten years' 
of work in a model city college, a wonderful institution, 
if I may so class it. He has made that college not only 
the crowning thing in our system of public education, but 
he has made it a part of the administrative system of the 
city. It was his great purpose to do that and he has 



Inauguration Proceedings 67 

started it on its way in such manner that his dream there 
is sure to be realized. I have been told that as the test 
of the really perfect City College man three of his boys 
were compelled to walk up here today. The Doctor is a 
great walker himself and thinks nothing of getting about 
the water front of our island two or three times before 
breakfast. There are in fact legends in the town about 
his walking across to Princeton before breakfast, when the 
road is good. He will find opportunity here and through- 
out the State to keep things " stepping lively " and to 
bring that wholesome out-of-door spirit of his into all 
that he does for the public educational system of the State. 
He is a man among men, as we well found, and we leave 
him with you with confidence that you will value him as 
we have valued him. I trust that he will come back to us 
often. When he does he will always find the people 
down there still loving him for what he has done, believ- 
ing in him thoroughly and believing that in securing him 
as the head of its educational system the State of New 
York is a fortunate Commonwealth. 

BENEDICTION BY THE RIGHT REVEREND 
T. M. A. BURKE 

Bishop of the Diocese of Albany 

We implore Thee, Almighty God, to send down Thy 
choicest blessings and benedictions upon all who have as- 
sisted at these exercises, and especially upon him to whom 
has been committed the direction of all the educational 
institutions of the State. Upon all who shall drink at 
the fountain of knowledge that shall flow from the univers- 
ities in every part of the State. In a word, we pray the 
blessing of the Almighty Father, Son and Holy Ghost 
may descend upon us and remain with us for ever, Amen. 
3 



EVENING SESSION 



J> 



ADDRESS BY MARTIN H. GLYNN 

Governor of the State of New York 

Tonight we honor a man and pay tribute to an idea. 
Our public schools are the idea and Doctor Finley the 
man. The man illustrates the idea and the idea typifies 
the man. 

Upon that idea the thing we call civilization is based. 
Upon it depend all enlightenment and all progress. 
Where that idea is voiced the world goes forward, where 
it is obscured the world stands still. Were it not for that 
idea the centuries would be but idle moments moving in 
a little circle; because of it, man is master of time, climb- 
ing heavenward with the years. That idea, that concept, 
is education. 

Education is the link which binds the hope of one gen- 
eration to the achievement of the next. It gives to the 
eager youth of the present the fruits of all that men and 
women have done since the morning of the first day. It 
keeps imperishable the contributions of every age to the 
pleasure and profit of the race. It makes the revolutions 
of yesterday the conventions of today. It proclaims con- 
sideration for humanity, but preaches love for man. It 
provides the wine of poetry and the nutriment of science. 
It conquers force by persuasion and slays wrong by irony 
and wit. It fetters prejudice with logic and liberates 
reason with rhetoric. It is the eternal ocean, fed by rivers 
of the forgotten past, on which sail the argosies of the 
future. 



72 The University of the Stale of New York 

To educate — to draw forth all the splendid possibil- 
ities of a human being — is the noblest task that any in- 
dividual or any nation can attempt. To educate — to 
place the hard-worn truths of vanished years before the 
questioning and aspiring mind — is a responsibility that 
rests upon every state and every nation. Barbarism can 
not compete with civilization, ignorance can not match 
strength with intelligence. The nations which have acted 
upon this fact have flourished and gone forward; those 
which have neglected it have been compelled to yield and 
to recede. 

It is not enough that a select and distinguished few 
should be admitted to the benefits of education. Just as 
no nation can be contented where hundreds gorge while 
millions starve, so no nation can be intelligent where the 
elect are educated and the multitude are ignorant. Edu- 
cation itself cries out against a monopoly of education; 
the more we know the more we realize how necessary it is 
for others to know. 

Education, which reaches from the highest in the state 
to the lowest, which knows no distinctions of race or class, 
which is made the rightful heritage of every child and be- 
comes the reliance of every citizen, is the greatest influ- 
ence for good that any nation can possess. Where such 
education flourishes there liberty breathes; where it grows 
and spreads, there tolerance and humanity will be found. 
No man whose intelligence has been quickened into life 
is willingly a slave; no man who does not know the rea- 
sons for his enfranchisement is really free. Ignorance and 
tyranny go hand in hand; liberty and enlightenment are 
brothers. 

We of the republic have cause to congratulate our- 
selves on the wisdom and foresight of those who estab- 



Inauguration Proceedings 73 

lished our common schools. We have grown great and 
prosperous because, after this nation put its hand to the 
proposition that all men are politically equal, it made 
the proposition something more than an assertion by pro- 
viding the surest means of preserving that equality. One 
of the most significant facts in the history of our country 
is that the man who wrote the Declaration of Independ- 
ence was one of the men who blazed the way for the 
country's system of common schools. And when Thomas 
Jefferson proclaimed to the world that America's men de- 
manded freedom of conscience and of action, he per- 
formed no greater service than when he sought for Amer- 
ica's children that freedom of education without which 
all other freedom is insecure. 

New York led the rest of the country with the first 
public school, and it leads today as it did two hundred 
eighty years ago. John Millar, deputy commissioner of 
education for Canada, recently declared that " no part 
of the Republic presents a more valuable study to the 
educationist than New York;" that its public schools 
" bid fair to put New York educationally in the front 
place of the United States as it is already commercially 
and politically." 

In 1633 Holland was two centuries ahead of the rest 
of Europe in education, and the New Amsterdam Dutch 
brought to this country the educational spirit of the father- 
land. In 1 633 they opened America's first public school 
and made Rollandsen its master. 

Between that first crude attempt at general education 
and New York's present school system there is the same 
difference as between the Half Moon of Hendrick Hud- 
son and the ocean liner of today. Rollandsen, we are 
told, supplemented his slender salary by running a laun- 



74 The University of the State of New York 

dry. One of his successors was removed because he came 
out second best in a suit over the price of a hog. Another 
entered the educational field because his tavern was not 
sufficiently patronized. New York's first educational sys- 
tem had thirty masters in as many years. Tonight we 
venture the hope that thirty years will not see a single 
change in the presiding genius of the present system. 

The first act of Governor Clinton after the British army 
of occupation had cleared from Staten Island, was to 
urge the Legislature to provide a suitable system of edu- 
cation. Governor Lewis, who took up the work where 
Clinton left off; Joseph Lancaster, who opened a free 
school in his own home; Gideon Hawley, whose labors 
earned for him the title of " Father of New York's Public 
Schools " — these are educational pioneers whom the 
State has reason to hold in affectionate esteem. 

To speak of the schools of New York without dwelling 
for a moment upon what religious and charitable organiza- 
tions have done for the cause of education in the State 
would be unfair and shortsighted. No inconsiderable part 
of the children of the State have received their schooling 
at the hands of private and denominational teachers. Re- 
ligion has performed additional service to the State by 
opening the doors of knowledge to all who came within 
its influence. Charity has been open-handed, not only in 
answering the needs of the body, but in striving to provide 
the necessities of the mind. The schoolmaster and the 
clergyman have worked hand in hand for the betterment 
of those about them. And in many cases the clergyman 
and the schoolmaster have been one and the same. 

Education, as we know it, is under obligations to many 
men and many influences, but there is no single factor to 
which education owes a greater debt than it does to re- 



Inauguration Proceedings 75 



ligion. The shrine and the schoolhouse have never been 
very far apart at any stage of the world's progress. Edu- 
cation is the natural consequnce of a desire to help one's 
fellowman. 

For those more fortunate in this world's goods, who do 
not need to turn to the State for education, or for those 
who received their training in denominational or chari- 
table schools, the public school may not mean the begin- 
ning and the end of education. But to the millions who 
have found it the only place where they could slake their 
thirst for knowledge, the " little red schoolhouse " is a 
sacred temple that no man dare profane. 

Within its friendly walls a message of hope and in- 
spiration has been brought to the American boy. There 
he has learned that no task is too hard for him to attempt, 
no height too lofty for him to scale. There he has found 
the universal key that unlocks all the mysteries of science 
and of art, the magic key of study. There he has dis- 
covered that two and two make four, and that neither 
chicanery nor dishonesty can alter the result; there he has 
learned that this fine old world is round, and that its un- 
yielding corners and cruel angles are only superficial. And 
beyond all the reading, all the writing, all the arithmetic 
that have taxed his patience through snowy winter morn- 
ings and sultry summer afternoons, the American boy has 
learned something else in the public school. He has 
learned the American's first lesson, the lesson of equality 
and equal opportunity. 

There are no favorites in the " little red schoolhouse." 
The son of the banker and the son of the mechanic meet 
there upon a common footing. Each school is a miniature 
republic where industry and ability are the only roads to 
favor and success. As every one of Napoleon's soldiers 



76 The University of the State of New York 

carried in his knapsack a field marshal's baton, so each 
American boy carries in his schoolbag a title to the presi- 
dency of the United States. 

Every boy who has fought and laughed his way through 
the " little red schoolhouse " knows that all class dis- 
tinctions are artificial and that merit is the measure of the 
man. Whatever else they do, the schools of America 
produce real Americans fit for the duties and the re- 
sponsibilities of American citizenship. 

I know whereof I speak when I talk of the public 
schools. It was in one of this State's public schools that 
I learned to read and write. It was in a public school 
that I caught my first glimpse of the broad world beyond 
the circling hills and mountains about my native town. 
It was in a public school that I discovered the glorious 
world where the greatest men of all the ages live and talk 
— the world of books ; and I would be ingrate and rec- 
reant if I let this occasion slip without humbly acknowl- 
edging some part of the debt I owe to a " little red school- 
house " in the town of Kinderhook, some twenty miles 
from here. And little old Kinderhook has played large 
in the school history of New York. In Kinderhook 
Washington Irving found Ichabod Crane, the typical 
schoolmaster of literature, and in Kinderhook's grave- 
yard sleeps Ichabod Crane, immortalized by Irving, mem- 
orialized by a marble shaft and revered by every true 
Kinderhookian. It was a " little red schoolhouse " in 
Kinderhook which gave all the education he ever had to 
that master of men and formulator of issues, who lifted 
himself by his own bootstraps from a barefoot boy to the 
presidency of the United States — I refer to the Chester- 
field of American politics, Martin VanBuren, one of the 
best friends of public education that America ever had. 



Inauguration Proceedings 77 

VanBuren never forgot what he owed to education and 
education will never forget what it owes to him. 

I know the public schools, and, because I know them, 
I refuse to be disturbed by those who seek, from time to 
time, to alarm the nation with gloomy forebodings and 
dire predictions. For when they tell us that danger 
threatens the institutions of the Republic, when they warn 
us that the ship of state is drifting into perilous waters, 
when the cynic grows faint-hearted and the credulous 
becomes discouraged, I hear the bells ringing from ten 
thousand public schools and my heart grows warm again. 

I see twenty million children marching into the schools 
that dot the hills and valleys from Maine to Mexico. I 
watch them conning their readers and thumbing their his- 
tories. I see them being molded into American citizens 
and I know that America can make no mistake which 
America can not rectify. 

It is a great task, Doctor Finley, a noble duty with 
which the State of New York charges you today. You 
are being placed at the head of the schools in the greatest 
State of the Union. New York is giving into your keep- 
ing the eager minds of its children; it is entrusting you 
with the care of its future citizens. 

New York does so with confidence. It has studied 
you and knows you. It has reviewed your record and 
found it inspiring, it has inquired into your capacities and 
is convinced that they measure up to the full dignity and 
importance of your office. You have been successful in 
everything else you have undertaken; we know you will 
be successful in the duties you assume today. 

Sparta's education made soldiers; Rome's education 
made orators; New York's education, under your guid- 
ance, must make men. The three R's have long been 



78 The University of the State of New York 

the square and the compass. The time has come when 
they should be superseded by the three H's, Head and 
Heart and Hand. Times change, sings old Horace, 
and we change with them. The romance of chivalry is 
giving way to the poetry of mechanism. Kipling's " Song 
of Steam " supplants Tennyson's " King Arthur and His 
Table Round;" the "Man on Horseback" salutes 
' The Man with the Hoe." And we must meet the 
change. 

May all good fortune attend you in your task. May 
you find on every hand the support and encouragement 
that your solemn duty deserves. And may all who serve 
under you remember that the real temple of the State's 
liberties is not the Capitol, where the State's laws are 
made, not the Courts, where the State's laws are inter- 
preted and enforced, but rather this beautiful building in 
which we are gathered, from which the truths that under- 
lie all law and all discipline will be carried to the future 
citizens who must obey and defend those laws. 

Our hopes, our aspirations and our prayers accompany 
you as you enter upon your labors and, with confidence 
and pride, we salute you caretaker of our liberties, guard- 
ian of our children, keeper of the pathway to our stars. 



ADDRESS BY FRANKLIN K. LANE 
Secretary of the Interior 
Lad.es and gentlemen, as a reward for that very cour- 
teous rising vote I shall spare you an essay I saw by the 
program on arr.ving here that I was to dehver something 
entitled an address. This is the first news to me that 
there was any such expectation. On the contrary, it was 
stipulated in the bond that if I came 1 should be called 
upon to say no more than a word, but the .dea appears 
to be that every man who is in public fife can upon any 
occasion, or upon no occas.cn, be called upon for some- 
thing that is called an address. We grow into the habit 
of thinking that all lawyers are statesmen, but probably 
there is no greater absurdity obtaining in the United States. 
We know that some lawyers are not statesmen just as we 
know that some newspaper men are. Speaking of news- 
paper men reminds me of Kinderhook and I remember 
that there was another Martin that came from Kinderhook. 
I suppose that I am honored with this inv.tat.on be- 
cause of my position. I have come because of the desire 
to extend a personal and an official word of congratulation 
to the State of New York. Never has she done hersel 
prouder than in the selection of this man for the head of 
The University of the State of New York. I have come 
also that I might learn of your University and see if it is 
not possible, fashioning ourselves upon your model, to 
develop something for the people of the United States 
that in time would develop into as great and useful an 
agency as that which you have here. As Secretary of 
the Interior I am the head of what is known as the 
Bureau of Education and therefore the representative of 



80 The University of the State of New York 

all there is of the educational forces of the United States. 
In my last report I said to Congress that either that 
bureau should be given sufficient equipment to make it 
competent to help the students and the teachers and 
the schools of the United States, or that it should be 
abolished. Its chief function at the present time is to 
gather statistics. The thing that it does best is to care 
for the reindeer in Alaska. In another sense I am con- 
nected with the educational institutions of the United 
States because I have under my care the Indian schools, 
which are among the best of the schools in this country. 
We have some agricultural schools that I think will rank 
with those of the State of New York, or of the state of 
Illinois. 

There is another function with which the Secretary 
of the Interior has to do, and this is perhaps the 
only connection in which you have ever heard of that 
position. He is supposed to be the conservator of the 
resources of the United States. He conserves the land 
that it may not fall into the hands of monopoly, so that 
there will be an opportunity for the boy of tomorrow to 
get a farm. He conserves the coal so that that resource 
may not be soon exhausted. He conserves the forests 
and the lands of the Indians, and I hope soon, the in- 
valuable radium of the country. He conserves the water 
power, that resource from which in the future we must 
draw so extensively for our lights and our fuel and our 
power. Why should not that officer be a conservator of 
another kind — conserve the body and the brain of the 
young of this country? What more valuable service 
can be done than to put to the highest beneficial use the 
young mind, the young American body and the young 
American brain? How may this be done? We can 



Inauguration Proceedings 81 

do nothing as a federal government save by stimulating 
youth. We can take on the methods you have adopted 
here if we can find a man such as Doctor Finley to put 
in charge of such a bureau as the Government of the 
United States should have. My friends, we have only 
begun to realize how wasted are the lives and energies 
and capacities of our young men and women and our 
boys and girls. 

Work does no one harm; idleness finally corrupts the 
best training that men and women can have. We are 
holding our young men and our girls down in the cities 
and on the farms so that they have no opportunity to rise 
and become those citizens that we expect them to be. I 
hope that the three H's of which the Governor spoke 
will be deeply imbedded in the platform of the people 
of New York State, because we need not only learning, 
not erudition alone, we need more particularly heart and 
hope in our work. It is not mere book learning that 
makes men good citizens, or that makes men able and 
great in the world of affairs. Above and beyond all 
else it is character and faith. 

There is no place in politics and no place in the United 
States for the man who is a cynic, for the man who does 
not have hope in our institutions and confidence in him- 
self and in the future of our land. The man who makes 
America is the man who believes not alone in the public 
schools but who believes in the possibilities of our land. 

The public schools can be made useful only as they 
train the boy's hand as well as his head. Some time ago I 
was at a rather unique function, a Chinese dinner, and 
opening each course there was served some particular 
thing which went to satisfy another taste than that of 
appetite. A beautiful picture was handed around the 



82 The University of the State of New York 

table between the courses, then came a singer who sang 
a poem written by the man who gave the dinner, and then 
came around a crystal bowl which went from hand to 
hand for each one to feel; and so, in one way or another, 
each sense was gratified during that dinner. They had 
learned to cultivate and make use of eyes and of ears 
and of touch. Helen Keller has been called the great- 
est woman of all time and the greatest personality that 
America has ever produced. Why? Because she has 
developed her sense of touch, because she has learned to 
become mistress of the learning of the world through her 
fingers. So it is and it must be that the boys and the 
girls of the United States, if they are to become thor- 
oughly educated, must become masters of themselves 
and first masters of their senses. We pass by birds the 
names of which we do not know, we walk under stars 
and can not give the name of a single constellation, we 
tread the forests and we do not know the trees. 

Our boys and girls have not been trained to use their 
senses; they have been trained out of letters in books, but 
you can not make men and women out of letters in books. 
To be educated is to be alive, to have the whole being 
alive and be there at all times. That is the thing that 
has made Helen Keller, that is the thing that made 
Napoleon — to be able to concentrate all your forces 
and all your strength at one point and be alive not only 
to the thing that lies on the printed page, but to the thing 
that is of important moment around you and to be able 
to put your mind upon every problem that arises. This 
is true education and upon a basis such as that you will 
find men and women rise up who will have character and 
if that character is modified, strengthened and ennobled 



Inauguration Proceedings 83 

by conscience you will have a people and get a citizenry 
that will be a pride and honor to a Republic. 

The State of New York is a great state and so we must 
expect great things from her. You are the big brother 
of all the states. We in the West look to you for guid- 
ance in educational matters. We look to see whether 
you pay your teachers well or not, whether the teachers 
of this State are getting $30 a month, whether the pro- 
fession of teaching is degraded or ennobled, whether you 
give a high place to your teacher as they do in Europe, 
or whether you put him in the back rank. There is no 
use in talking education unless the educator is treated with 
dignity. The American people have one test that is 
superior to other tests when it comes to rank, and you 
will never have an educational system in this State unless 
you have men and women as teachers whom you respect; 
and you will not respect them unless you pay them well. 
So I say, you are the big brother to all of us and I ask 
that you will be worthy of the position that you have in 
our affections and that you lay out here a model sys- 
tem of education that we of the West may imitate, and 
that you may further develop this great invention, this 
University of yours. I am proud in the confidence that 
the man you have chosen for this position will do all that 
is humanly possible and make New York's name a great 
credit throughout the world as an educational force. 



ADDRESS BY CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

President Emeritus of Harvard University 

The position into which Doctor Finley has been this 
day inducted is unique, so far as I know, in the United 
States. He is at once President of The University of 
the State of New York, an examining and certifying 
university, and State Commissioner of Education. These 
two titles, now for the first time combined, indicate that 
the incumbent may exercise a large influence and some 
measure of control over the entire range of public educa- 
tion, from the kindergarten through the university. 

Most influential educational positions in this country 
can affect directly only one of the two great divisions of 
education, the elementary and secondary schools on the 
one hand, and the colleges and universities on the other. 
Doctor Finley's studies and labors may cover the whole 
field. I congratulate Doctor Finley, first, on the wide 
scope of his work; second, on the moment at which he 
enters on so vast a labor, a time of extraordinary develop- 
ment and progress, and of lively social awakening to new 
objects and ends of public education. 

Greater enlargements of educational effort have been 
proposed within the last ten years than in any previous 
period; and in some respects a real revolution in both the 
subjects and the methods of elementary and secondary 
education is well started. The most interesting times in 
education and politics are the times of rapid evolution. 

I speak first of the enlargements of education. The 
conception of public education as limited to childhood 
and youth has already been greatly modified. On every 
hand we see an increasing utilization of schoolhouses and 



86 The University of the State of Nen> York 

school equipment for the benefit of adults who are already 
earning a livelihood. In many cities the schoolhouses are 
utilized as social centers of instruction and rational enter- 
tainment. Evening schools for young men and women 
already earning wages receive much more attention from 
municipalities than they did even five years ago ; and after- 
noon and evening technical schools, Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association classes, and correspondence schools for the 
benefit of young men and women who are already engaged 
in a trade, or other skilled occupation, are numerous and 
thriving. The universities, through their extension depart- 
ments, share amply in this development of education for 
the adult. The United States Agricultural Department, 
the agricultural departments of many state universities, 
and the General Education Board endowed by Mr John 
D. Rockefeller, have demonstrated within the last ten 
years the enormous value to the country of instruction in 
agriculture and economics, given by well-equipped itin- 
erant instructors directly to farmers and the grown-up 
sons and daughters of farmers, and followed by local 
competitions and demonstrations. The summer schools, 
which have multiplied so rapidly during the last ten years, 
have proved highly serviceable to thousands of adults 
who have already entered on teaching or other intellectual 
calling. State and city libraries lend books all over 
their respective territories, soon with the effective aid of 
the parcel post. Many of the reform movements, in 
which far-seeing and public-spirited men and women 
have recently engaged, require a large amount of public 
teaching before they can be effectively organized and car- 
ried into practice; and most of these reforms endeavor to 
use directly and indirectly the services of the schools, 
colleges, and universities, and to utilize their equipment. 



Inauguration Proceedings 87 

On this comparatively new educational work the success 
of many social reforms absolutely depends; such, for ex- 
ample, as the reform of the civil service, the temperance 
reform, the diminution of infant mortality, all the new 
projects in preventive medicine, and all the new eugenic 
proposals. The promoters of these reforms are all preach- 
ing, teaching, and exhorting, and their work is funda- 
mentally educational. In a democracy there is no other 
way to effect the needed progressive improvements in 
government, industries, and social life. The enlarge- 
ment of the function of public education, and the im- 
provement of its methods, are to be the mainstays of 
free institutions. To this mighty enginery your new Com- 
missioner of Education has already set his hand. 

Another kind of enlargement is taking place within 
the present educational structure. Great efforts are put 
forth to keep children longer in school before they go to 
work; to establish continuation schools for children from 
fourteen to sixteen years of age; to improve superintend- 
ence by authorizing several towns to employ one super- 
intendent; to create one good, well-equipped, well-graded 
central school, to which children living at a distance are 
transported at the town's or the state's expense, instead 
of several, small, scattered, ungraded schools; to provide 
in cities a variety of secondary schools for both sexes in 
addition to the traditional high school, such, for instance, 
as commercial and mechanic arts high schools. All these 
interior modifications of the public school system require 
the cooperation of parents, pupils, and industrial and 
commercial establishments to carry out and make effective 
the improvements. They also involve many changes of 
subjects and methods within the schools themselves, par- 
ticularly in the grades. Although beginnings have been 



88 The University of the State of New York 

made in many American communities in several of these 
directions, the bulk of the work in the country at large 
still remains to be done ; and the great State of New York 
is no exception in this respect. 

These improvements have been set on foot in response 
to new conceptions of the objects to be attained through 
public education. For the great majority of children the 
ultimate object of schooling, forty years ago, was to en- 
able them to read and write, and to do simple ciphering. 
Those slight acquisitions at fourteen years of age were 
all that the mass of mankind was supposed to need in 
order to earn a livelihood, and take a fair part in the pro- 
cesses of free government. The situation is completely 
changed today. For the earning of a good livelihood 
today the workman needs much more than the bare ele- 
ments of reading, writing and arithmetic, which after all 
are only the tools of education or keys of knowledge; 
he needs a deal of information to enable him to con- 
duct his own life safely and happily, and he needs 
some sort of skill of eye and hand. Furthermore, the 
voter urgently needs to know something about the struc- 
ture and function of modern governments, of democratic 
society, of the human body, and of industrial organiza- 
tion. None of these subjects was alluded to in the pub- 
lic schools of fifty years ago, and even now they receive 
but scanty attention. The functions of government have 
developed so rapidly within the past fifty years, and 
touch so nearly the well-being of the community, that 
every voter needs to understand what the functions of 
government really are, and under what conditions, and 
by what sort of officials, they can be well discharged. 
Government, today, is expected to take care of the pub- 
lic health, to regulate industries and commerce, to prevent 



Inauguration Proceedings 89 

some monopolies and to regulate others; to supervise all 
the means of transportation by which cities live; to con- 
struct, maintain, and operate vital public works; and to 
conduct great systems of public education. These func- 
tions are numerous, essential, and difficult; and none but 
highly trained men can perform them. Every voter needs 
to understand what an expert is, how experts are trained, 
and how experts should be utilized in the public service. 

It is only within about forty years that the mass of the 
voters began to use their power to control the government, 
which previously had been left in the hands of the better 
educated and more prosperous class. The real experi- 
ment in democratic government is still to be tried; and it 
is only through a great expansion and vivification of the 
functions of public education that this prodigious experi- 
ment can be safely tried. 

Next I must sketch the new subjects and methods of 
instruction. The first addition that needs to be made to 
the instruction now given in the secondary schools, and 
to adults already earning their livelihood, is instruction in 
the elements of economics, and particularly in whatever 
relates to labor and capital and the indispensable union 
of the two in production, and to the distribution of neces- 
saries, comforts and luxuries, the ownership of the instru- 
ments of production, the relation of wages to prices, the 
control of monopolies, and the means of increasing the 
efficiency, and therefore the well-being of the entire com- 
munity. There would be great danger to civilization in 
the coming into the control of the government of masses 
of people whose ideas on these subjects were crude, mis- 
taken, or perverse. The well-being of the population at 
large can be increased only by increasing the total na- 
tional product of necessaries and comforts; and such an 



90 The University of the State of New York 

increase of product can be brought about only by in- 
creasing the average efficiency of the whole people in 
their work, or by improving the economy of the people 
in the distribution and intelligent consumption of the ag- 
gregate product. Yet many people seem to believe that 
a mere rise of wages can of itself, without increase of 
product, cause an increase of public well-being. It is 
an object of the utmost urgency to teach on a great scale 
both young people and adults, that capital is nothing but 
the agglomeration of those portions of the previous profits 
of capital and labor combined which were not consumed 
at the time, but were saved to be used in future produc- 
tion; and that these savings are, as a rule, necessarily put 
into lands and buildings, roads, railroads, sewers, water 
supplies, power plants, mines, and factories, which then 
become the means of obtaining, making, or transporting 
more or better goods for the population of succeeding 
years to consume. What an admirable function for a 
state department of education is here in sight! 

The urgent need of a democracy for instruction in eco- 
nomics is well measured by its frequent failure to elect to 
office efficient and honest men, capable of giving the peo- 
ple good service. The progress of a democracy in knowl- 
edge of economics will be best indicated by its increasing 
success in procuring an efficient public administration. 

The last fifteen years have been characterized educa- 
tionally by the introduction of new subjects into the pub- 
lic school system, and by many readjustments of the pro- 
portions in which the several subjects enter into school 
programs. New subjects and new methods have, in 
some measure, penetrated the elementary schools; but 
naturally the secondary schools have gained most in re- 
gard to variety of subjects and new methods of teaching. 



Inauguration Proceedings 91 

The years which stretch just before us will see large de- 
velopments in both these directions. Some educational 
administrators have already learned, and more are learn- 
ing, that it is indispensable for a public school to give 
much more attention, than has heretofore been given, to 
the systematic training of the senses, and to implanting 
habits of close observation, accurate recording, and care- 
ful comparing of records. In the modern industries indi- 
vidual skill of eye and hand tell more and more on the 
individual's earnings and the total productiveness. Well- 
trained senses also add greatly to the enjoyment of 
rational pleasures. All schools must hereafter attend 
more carefully than heretofore to this training of the 
senses. 

The subjects through which the senses can best be 
trained are also those in which mental application, or 
control by the will over mental processes, can best be 
practised. Furthermore, through the same subjects which 
best afford training for the senses, the information most 
needed by the child and the adult of today may best be 
acquired. What are these subjects? First, the sciences, 
such as chemistry, physics, and biology; second, the 
household arts; third, the use of common tools in the 
simple trades; fourth, drawing; and fifth, music. 

All these subjects should be started in proper sequence 
in the elementary schools, and in methods carefully 
adapted to the bodily and mental development of the 
children; and all of them should be carried through the 
secondary schools. There is, of course, nothing new in 
this theoretical prescription. Herbert Spencer stated it 
and urged it aggressively fifty-five years ago, and many 
other educational philosophers have pleaded for it. 
Spencer's doctrine that science was the knowledge of 



92 The University) of the State of New York 



greatest worth, and that skill in the arts by which the in- 
dividual and the community live, should be a prime ob- 
ject in all sorts of education, gained scanty acceptance in 
the generation to which he belonged, and even now is not 
the cause of the present movement toward the sciences 
and the useful arts as means, or staple, of education. 
The real cause of the present American tendencies in 
education is the new and complete dependence of modern 
industries, commerce, and government on applied science 
working through mechanical power, machinery, the wiser 
utilization of natural resources, and the varied skills 
which human beings must possess in order to direct these 
new agencies. The first duty in the education of the 
young is to prepare them, effectively, for usefulness and 
a fruitful life in the actual world into which they are 
soon going out — a world very different from the world 
of 1850, and even of 1880. This is the justification of 
the popular demand for vocational training. The de- 
mand is of course too narrow; it should cover the whole 
period of education and apply to all educational means 
and methods. 

To most men and women brought up on language, 
literature, history, and philosophy, with a dash of incom- 
patible elementary mathematics, this doctrine is repul- 
sive; it seems to them utilitarian, materialistic, and unim- 
aginative, devoid of idealism and, almost, of morality. 
But what in fact are the effects of this sort of training on 
children and adults? The desirable mental and moral 
effects on children can be more surely attained by the 
new training than by the old ; and if we look at the mental 
and moral development of the community as a whole, it 
is plain that the era of pure and applied science, which 
began near the opening of the nineteenth century, has 



Inauguration Proceedings 93 



been remarkable for ethical development, for wonderful 
uses of the human imagination in new fields, for amazing 
instances of the power of the human mind over nature, 
and for extraordinary demonstrations of the attunement 
of man's mind to the Creative Intelligence. Only those 
who know little or nothing about the sciences conceive of 
them as unesthetic, unimaginative, or unmoral. Regarded 
as material for education, they are charged in the highest 
degree with beauty, grace, order, and rectitude. 

The American schools, public, private and endowed, 
have always tried to give some lessons in behavior, man- 
ners, duty, and patriotism; but the social and industrial 
experiences of the past twenty years prove that enlarge- 
ment of this sort of teaching is imperative. 

These principles will be illustrated as we now proceed 
to consider the methods of teaching the sciences and arts 
in the elementary and secondary schools. When we 
speak of training the senses, just what do we mean? Do 
we not mean that we propose to train the child to see 
correctly or accurately, to touch deftly and to learn more 
and more by touching, and to hear with precision in re- 
gard to tone, time, rhythm, and inflection? All this is, 
obviously, training in accuracy, in doing whatever we do 
just right, and not about right, or well enough. When 
we require a child to make a correct report, either orally 
or in writing, of what he has seen, touched or heard, we 
train the memory and the power of expression in lan- 
guage; and there is no better training in the accurate use 
of the native language. When we require a boy to plane 
a board to a true level, or a girl to produce a pudding or 
a cake from a well-expressed, accurate receipt, we are 
training him or her to win moral effects on his or her char- 
acter as well as a material result. To do a mechanical or 



94 The University) of the State of New York 

artistic piece of work thoroughly is much more than the 
material operation; it is a moral achievement. To con- 
ceive, plan, and get into operation, and keep profitable 
a great factory, machine shop, mill, or mine, requires an 
immense effort of the imagination, and moral qualities of 
a high order. The transformation wrought in business 
ethics in the last years of the nineteenth century, and the 
first years of the twentieth, has proved to be one of the 
great moral and humanitarian movements of modern times 
— and the end is not yet. 

The uniform method of teaching the sciences and arts 
at school must be the laboratory method, which calls for 
accurate observation from every pupil, and attentive use, 
every day, of eyes, ears and fingers. In the rural ele- 
mentary schools much of this work should be done out of 
doors, on walks and excursions to see in operation the 
forces which have molded and are molding the crust of 
the earth, in the cultivation of vegetables and flowers, 
and in the study of insects and domestic animals. In the 
lower grades there will be more of exposition and leading ; 
in the upper grades, and the secondary schools, more of 
independent work on the part of the pupil. Accompany- 
ing all the laboratory work should go incessant practice 
in speaking and writing, the quality and quantity being 
proportioned to the age of the pupil. Books and reading 
should hold a secondary, but still an important place. 
Among the arts to be acquired, reading aloud, drawing, 
and singing should hold high places; for there is invalu- 
able training, as well as great utility, in all three. Draw- 
ing has the advantage of providing, simultaneously, ad- 
mirable training for both eye and hand. Music is highly 
desirable, not only as training for the individual, but as 
imparting a high and durable capacity for enjoyment, and 



Inauguration Proceedings 95 

power to give pleasure to others. In none of our schemes 
of education have we thought enough about this power — 
so precious in its effects on children and youth — of giv- 
ing pleasure to other people. 

All the while the child should have it in mind that he is 
acquiring arts and faculties which will enable him to make 
himself useful to others, and so, by and by to earn his 
own livelihood and that of his family. The normal 
human loves and devotions should be presented as motives. 
The desire for approbation and for success in competi- 
tions may be relied on. 

An important distinction between this method in edu- 
cation and the earlier method, is that it leads the child to 
personal activity ; it teaches through action. The attitude 
of the child toward language, literature, history and phil- 
osophy is ordinarily that of passive reception or absorp- 
tion. The memory is exercised on words and on sayings 
of other people. The child hears about men and things; 
his mind plays upon stories, descriptions, narratives, and 
poems; not on real things and persons that he has seen 
or on events in which he took part. There is a wide dif- 
ference for training purposes between absorbing a narra- 
tive written by another, and producing a narrative your- 
self about events you have witnessed; and the latter is 
far the best training process. Moreover, the latter by no 
means excludes the former. The good teacher gets a 
strong reaction from the child, and that reaction is the real 
training. 

It is already demonstrated that normal children take 
much more interest in the subjects and the methods here 
described, than the)' do in the subjects and methods of the 
old regime; and this increased interest in school work, on 
the part of the children, would be a sufficient argument in 



96 The University of the State of Neiv York 

favor of the change. Inasmuch as no adult or well-trained 
person can ever do his best unless he is thoroughly inter- 
ested in his work, it may be assumed that no child can do 
his best work when he is driven to a task which he dis- 
likes, or to which he is indifferent. Some rather archaic 
persons maintain that there is no discipline in work which 
is not repulsive, or at least uninteresting ; but the fact seems 
to be that work done without interest and pleasure is 
never good work in regard to either intensity or rapidity. 
Child work without interest compares with interested child 
work just as slave labor compares with free labor — 
product smaller and enjoyment nil. 

I lately witnessed in a private school in Buffalo an 
exhibition of the Dalcroze method of training young chil- 
dren and adolescents to make rhythmical movements of the 
limbs, head, and body in time with music; no apparatus 
was used, and no implements of any sort. The move- 
ments were slow or quick, grave or gay, and were highly 
enjoyable; but they always required on the part of the 
child two mental exertions of high value. First, a con- 
centrated attention to the music, with instant response 
to any change of rhythm therein; and second, complete 
inhibition of irrelevant sights and sounds. The attention 
given by the children, moment by moment, and the con- 
centration of their wills on the sport were most remark- 
able. The immediate physical result of this training is 
the improvement the children exhibit in agility, alertness, 
grace, and cooperative skill, but the most important result 
is the strenuous training of mind and will ; for the mental 
power and the self-control acquired in these exercises are 
the best results of any education, since they are applicable 
anywhere to any subject. An agreeable and useful out- 
come of the Dalcroze method of rhythmical movements is 



Inauguration Proceedings 97 



that it leads straight to a very desirable kind of active, 
graceful, pleasurable, animating dancing. The Dalcroze 
method is a strong case of teaching through action on the 
part of the pupil. 

The need of instruction at school in the use of the or- 
dinary tools of the fundamental trades is really very 
urgent, now that the wages in the building trades are so 
high that the house owner with a moderate income ought 
to be able to make his own repairs ; for he can hardly call 
any mechanic into his house without paying him, by the 
day, more than he earns himself. The need, too, of 
widely diffused instruction in the art of cooking has long 
been pressing; but it is much more pressing now that the 
cost of food in this country has risen so seriously. For- 
tunately, with skilful cooking, the cost of feeding an 
average American family can be much reduced to the 
great advantage of the family; since the most expensive 
elements in the diet which an ordinary American prefers 
are hygienically inexpedient. 

Within three or four years the American public has 
undergone a change of mind regarding teaching in schools 
and colleges what is called social hygiene — a delicate and 
difficult subject, which ought to be preceded at school by 
instruction in the elements of biology. Nearly everybody 
agrees that the former policy of silence on the subject of 
social hygiene has failed, and yet nearly everybody per- 
ceives that it is impossible to teach it in the public schools 
without imposing careful limitations. There is indeed 
very serious difficulty in providing, in the great public 
school systems, competent instruction in the sciences and 
in the arts which depend directly on applied science, for 
the reason that well-trained teachers of these subjects are 



98 The University of the State of Nev> York 

but few. The problem of the educational administrator 
always is how to get into practice well-known theories in 
education, long since accepted by the educated world at 
large, or at least by him. This is to be Doctor Finley's 
great task; to get into practice all over this great State, 
in urban and rural communities alike, principles of edu- 
cation which the leaders of educational thought have es- 
tablished, but have never, or seldom, seen put into effective 
execution. I dare say that the first problem with which 
your new Commissioner of Education will grapple, will 
be the problem of training teachers for the new work he 
plans, as, for instance, for the laboratory teaching of the 
sciences, for teaching English through reading aloud, the 
daily writing of accurate descriptions and narratives, the 
frequent recitation, and the occasional opportunity for 
dramatic expression, and for the teaching of economics 
and social hygiene. 

Having myself retired now from long educational serv- 
ice, I may, perhaps, be permitted to say that I feel the 
strongest sympathy with Doctor Finley as he enters upon 
his new functions. Under similar conditions I undertook, 
forty-five years ago, a like task in a narrower field; the 
task of introducing into an old college, whose rules and 
practices had been rather firmly fixed by custom and tradi- 
tion, many new subjects of instruction with a regulated 
freedom of election for the student among all the subjects. 
Then and there as now and here, an educational adminis- 
trator found his task to be to bring into use educational 
principles which had been often stated and sometimes 
partially accepted, but never given free play. Mine was 
a difficult but inspiring task, as Doctor Finley's will be. 
The veteran heartily congratulates the public servant in 



Inauguration Proceedings 99 

his prime on his cheerful prospects and wide opportunities, 
and also on the difficulties and obstacles he will certainly 
encounter; his prospects and opportunities invite him to 
his noble task; but his conflicts with discouragements and 
doubts will reward him most, and in the end make his 
career — which we all hope will be long — memorable 
in the educational history of this State and of the country. 



ADDRESS BY J. J. JUSSERAND 
Ambassador from France 

Foreign travelers who visited this city at the time when 
your University was founded, one hundred thirty years 
ago, usually mentioned that they had been there, and hav- 
ing nothing to add, added nothing. Such was the case, 
for example, with Marquis de Chastellux, Rochnmbeau's 
chief of staff. A great city has now risen by the border 
of the Hudson river, the worthy capital of the Em- 
pire State, with handsome structures, some which no 
traveler could pass without notice; among them the one 
where we now stand, a temple raised to learning. 

We meet, here, Americans and French, in unity of 
good will, on an important occasion. A new leader of 
men is about to assume power, a power the greater that 
the men he is going to lead are to be young men. The 
future is not in our hands but in theirs. To assume this 
great task, you have looked around and considered every 
possible choice ; wanting a man of experience and wisdom, 
with a kind heart and a strong will, of ample sympathies, 
knowing his country and others too, you came to the con- 
clusion that in no one else was to be found such a com- 
bination of qualities, and you selected John Huston 
Finley. 

To the good wishes which have been offered him today 
on behalf of the universities, colleges, schools and citi- 
zens of this State, and also of the educational departments 
of other states, it is my happy lot to be able to add the 
good wishes of France. 

The ancients, as you know, placed amulets in the cor- 
ner stones of their newly founded buildings, so as to se- 



102 The University of the State of New York 

cure luck to the structure and its inmates. In the corner 
stone of many of the chief monuments of this country, a 
French amulet was placed and proved a good omen. 
One was used when that mighty structure was being 
raised, visible now from all parts of the world, American 
Independence; another when the question was no longer 
of your being free, but of your being great and when we 
ceded to you Louisiana ; something French when you be- 
gan building that navy, now so famous, of which the first 
man of war was made after a French model and the flag 
was first solemnly saluted by Lamotte Piquet at Brest on 
the 13th of February, 1778; when you began raising the 
federal city, whose plans were also French; when you de- 
vised the law and charter of this University of the State 
of New York, and two Americans of fame, Alexander 
Hamilton and James Duane, worked at it with the French 
Huguenot L'Homedieu, one of those men from French 
Rochelle who founded, in your State, that New Rochelle, 
whose anniversary we were commemorating last summer. 

I come in my turn, and not merely in my own name but 
in that of my nation, I bring good wishes, at the beginning 
of his new functions, to your new President; may such 
wishes prove as lucky to him as those brought by men of 
my blood proved to your nation, when they visited these 
shores to be brothers in arms to George Washington. 

I am the freer to say that I speak in the name of France, 
that President Finley is well known there. Knox Col- 
lege, Princeton University, the College of the City of 
New York are not the only places where his voice has 
been heard. Pie has taught us our own history, he has 
made better known to us our own pioneers and coureurs 
de bois, those hardy men of early days who dashed into 
the unknown, along the Mississippi valley or toward the 



Inauguration Proceedings 103 

Rockies and the great " Western sea," clotting their path 
with luck-bringing or fame-bringing amulets, one of which 
recording the bold ventures of the Chevalier de la Veren- 
drye, something this time like a real material amulet, was 
discovered last summer in South Dakota. President Fin- 
ley spoke to delighted crowds in that old, old Sorbonne 
founded in the time of Saint Louis by Robert de Sorbon, 
for sixteen poor masters of arts, and which numbers now 
1 7,500 students, being the most widely attended uni- 
versity of today or of any day. 

When Yorktown had been captured by the allied 
armies of the thirteen states and of France, Rochambeau 
and his troops remained one year more in America, not 
knowing for sure whether the war was or not really fin- 
ished. During that period he received numerous addresses 
from legislatures, municipalities, universities and colleges. 
One was from the College of William and Mary at Wil- 
liamsburg, where he had established his quarters: "Among 
the many substantial advantages," said the president and 
professors, " which this country has already derived and 
which must ever continue to flow from its connection with 
France, we are persuaded that the improvement of useful 
knowledge will not be the least. A number of distin- 
guished characters in your army afford us the happiest 
presage that science as well as liberty will acquire vigor 
from the fostering hand of your nation." Rocharabeau's 
army included, in fact, one member and one future mem- 
ber of the French Academy, and some of his officers had 
profited enough by their university education to be able 
to use Latin in their letters to learned Americans, whose 
native language was to them unknown. 

The presage announced in the address from the Wil- 
liam and Mary College has been fulfilled; a constant ex- 



1 04 The University of the State of New York 

change of thoughts and views, a common search for the 
best democratic solution of the social problems, and of late 
years, an exchange, not simply of books and of thoughts, 
but of men too, have taken place to the great good 
of the two nations: nations which are different enough to 
try different experiments, and similar enough to profit by 
the results of the other's attempts. The first messenger of 
learning sent by one of the two countries to the other set 
an example that will not be easily surpassed: a scientist, 
a philosopher, a discoverer of nature's secrets, sent by you 
to us in early days, Benjamin Franklin. The exchange 
has continued since. The number of French men and 
women, economists, artists, students, thinkers, tourists, who 
come to study the great Western Republic and to see 
Americans in action, increases from year to year; while 
the number increases also of American and French profes- 
sors who go and teach in their own language in the other 
country. 

President Finley's task is one of paramount impor- 
tance and responsibility; two million future men, two mil- 
lion future citizens will have, in a measure, their minds and 
characters molded in accordance with his views. No one 
has any misgivings, everybody rejoices that it should be 
so. A pioneer by birth and tastes, a friend of pioneers, 
as his admirable studies on ours show, he will have to act 
as a pioneer, exploring those unknown lands, young 
people's minds, discovering the sort of seed that will 
fructify, clearing their souls of brambles and false no- 
tions, cutting off useless vegetation to let in light. 

Who is it that shapes the future of the country? Is it 
the statesman with his laws and treaties? The war min- 
ister with his armaments? It is they doubtless in a way, 
but more than they, and only a little less than the father 



Inauguration Proceedings 105 

and mother whom no one can replace, it is the wise 
teacher who does this. The future is in the hands of the 
young, but it is he who tells them what to do with it. 
It is he who gives to the nation that without which treaties 
are of no value, laws of no avail, armaments remain in- 
effective: complete men, true citizens. 

For the good of their country, for their own also, men 
need more and more to learn. Less and less opportunity, 
less and less success, less and less enjoyment will, 'as 
years pass by, be accessible to the untaught. In the six- 
teenth century Bacon wrote : " Crafty men contemn 
studies, simple men admire them, wise men use them." 
From which may be deducted that all who do not use 
them, be they simple or crafty, since they are not wise 
men, are fools. And what is a fool ? A popular proverb 
answers: "A wise man's ladder." Better play the part 
of the wise man than of the ladder. 

Between the New York system of education and ours, 
there is much resemblance; our aims are similar, our dif- 
ficulties too. The intervention of the state exercised 
through the ministry of public instruction, as it is here 
through the Commissioner of Education, has to be felt; 
general rules of discipline, the general order of studies 
are regulated by the state. Yet liberty must be respected, 
freedom of thought, of research, of system, of methods. 
The fair combination between the two needs a fine sense 
of measure and logic — a thing to which we attribute 
much importance. Nothing easier than to be an extremist, 
no mind so brutal and untaught that can not be one. It 
is one of our thinkers, Montesquieu, who said: 'The 
natural place of virture is by the side of liberty; but virtue 
can no more be found by the side of liberty carried to the 
extreme than by the side of servitude." Montesquieu 



1 06 The University of the Slate of Neto> York 

said also : ' The same distance that exists between 
heaven and earth, the same exists between the true spirit 
of equality and the spirit of extreme equality." 

In the middle ages Paris, whose university had been 
founded in the beginning of the twelfth century, was the 
chief center of studies. " Paris," wrote a foreign ob- 
server, Bartholomew the Englishman, a contemporary of 
Saint Louis, "has raised the standard of learning and 
civilization, not only in France, but in all the rest of 
Europe." In the midst of this busy world, when centers 
of learning have multiplied, nobody being willing any 
more to play the humble part of a wise man's ladder, 
Paris sees again many people from many lands flock to her 
for their tuition. Among that unique number of S 7,500 
students, over 3500 are foreign; twenty years ago there 
were only 457; almost every nationality is represented; 
one of the least numerous body of such students is, strange 
to say, the Americans, there being twice as many Ger- 
mans as there are citizens of this Republic. 

Our tuition, like yours, has a double object: first to 
impart knowledge, to show the way to acquire it, and to 
impress strongly on the mind that there is no science so 
dry that does not find its ralson d'etre in life. There can 
never be enough accuracy; but one can be accurate and 
yet preserve the feeling that it is in view of progress, of 
movement of the living that one thinks, studies, writes. 
Then, and moreover, great pains are taken to dis- 
cipline minds and form characters, to cause them to 
shun obscurity and exaggeration, to observe logic, 
and above all to keep a sense of measure and propor- 
tion. Such a discipline teaches that probity in labor 
which has ever been our universities' ideal, as it is our 



Inauguration Proceedings 107 

workshops' ideal. Few things are more dangerous for 
men than to start in life with the feeling, either that it is 
enough to do anything half well, or with a blunted sense 
of relativity and proportion. The road to success is 
barred in the first case; pitfalls lie on the road in the 
second. For many men with the latter disposition, the 
journey may begin brilliantly, but it will end in failure; 
learning will not be a help, but an aggravation; they will 
only rise unde altior asset casus. Those who will have 
submitted to fhe necessary discipline are, on the contrary, 
sure to succeed, whatever be the branch of human activ- 
ity they choose for their career. Our business men re- 
cently issued a statement demanding that the young men 
who wanted to follow a business career should first re- 
ceive a university training. It was not, of course, because 
they thought that the ability to construe the Latin or 
Greek lines of Virgil or Homer was, in itself, a help 
in trade or banking; what they wanted their future as- 
sistants to get was that sort of discipline, that habit of 
considering every side of each proposition, that sense of 
proportion which is given at the same time as such 
knowledge. 

Thus are formed strong nations of successful, sensible, 
reasonable men, firmly holding together, even in stormy 
days, different in race, language and origin though their 
ancestors may have been. What is a nation? ' The es- 
sence of a nation," wrote Renan, " is that all individuals 
composing it should have many things in common, and 
have also forgotten together many things. Language, in- 
terests, religion, affinities, geography, military necessities 
are insufficient if, to them, is not added the common pos- 
session of a rich inheritance of souvenirs and a desire to 



108 The University of the State of New York 

live together. To have common glories in the past, to 
have done great things together, to want to do more still, 
such is the essential condition for being one people." 

The French and the American nations are very differ- 
ent, they live far apart, their ways are, in many respects, 
quite dissimilar. Yet there is between them a peculiar 
link that does not usually exist under such circumstances; 
and why? The reason is that they have a rich inheritance 
of common souvenirs; they have common glories, they 
have done great things together and they have the same 
earnest longing for better conditions, for a happiness more 
accessible to all, for more justice, a fairer share, for the 
many, of the goods and beauty of this world. 

An American event is sure to have an echo in a French 
heart. From my heart I offer to your President the con- 
gratulations and good wishes of France. 



ACCREDITED DELEGATES 



Accredited Delegates 

University of Glasgow 

A. A. Bowman, Professor of Logic, Princeton Uni- 
versity 
D. Norman Smith 

Royal Frederik's University 

Nils Backer Grbndahl 

University of Norway 
Nils Backer Grbndahl 

University of Toronto 

William Renwick Riddell 

Queens University of Belfast 

J. Milne Barbour 
Robert Foster Kennedy 

University of Manitoba 

Edward P. Fetherstonhaugh, Professor of Electri- 
cal Engineering 

Leeds University 

Henry Drysdale Dakin 

National University of Ireland 
The Registrar 

University of Saskatchewan 
D. P. McColl 

Harvard University 

James Handasyd Perkins, Alumnus 

Yale University 

Henry P. Warren, Principal, Albany Academy 



\ 1 2 The University of the Slate of New York 

American Philosophical Society 

John M. Clarke, Director of Science, University of 
the State of New York 

Princeton University 

Howard McClenahan, Dean of the College 

Columbia University 

Nicholas Murray Butler, President 

George A. Plimpton, Treasurer of Barnard College 

Virginia C. Gildersleeve, Dean, Barnard College 

Henry Hurd Rusby, Dean, College of Pharmacy 

James E. Russell, Dean, Teachers College 

V. Everit Macy, Chairman, Board of Trustees, 

Teachers College 
Frederick P. Keppel, Dean, Columbia College 

Rutgers College 

W. H. S. Demarest, President 
A. T. Clearwater, Trustee 
Howard N. Fuller, Alumnus 
Robert C. Pruyn, Alumnus 

Dartmouth College 

Ernest Fox Nichols, President 

Dickinson College 

Eugene A. Noble, President 

University of Pittsburgh 

Samuel Black McCormick, Chancellor 

Georgetown University 

Alphonsus J. Donlon, President 

Williams College 

Henry D. Wild, Professor of Latin 
Francis Lynde Stetson, Trustee 



Inauguration Proceedings 1 1 3 

Union University 

Charles Alexander Richmond, President 
Willis G. Tucker, Dean, Albany College of Phar- 
macy 
William A. Larkin, Albany College of Pharmacy 
DeWitt Clinton, Librarian 
Frank Sargent Hoffman, Professor of Philosophy 

MlDDLEBURY COLLEGE 

John M. Thomas, President 

University of Georgia 

George Foster Peabody, Former Trustee 

New York Historical Society 
Robert H. Kelby, Librarian 

Academy of National Sciences 

John M. Clarke, Director of Science, University of 
the State of New York 

University of Virginia 

R. L. Harrison, Alumnus 

Colgate University 

Elmer Burritt Bryan, President 

Auburn Theological Seminary 
John Quincy Adams, Librarian 

Amherst College 

John M. Clarke, Director of Science, University of 
the State of New York 

Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences 
Franklin W. Hooper, Director 
A. Augustus Healy, President, Board of Trustees 
George W. Brush, Trustee 



1 1 4 The University of the Slate of New York 

Hobart College 

Lyman P. Powell, President 

Western Reserve University 
Charles F. Thwing, President 

New York University 

Elmer Ellsworth Brown, Chancellor 
Clarence D. Ashley, Dean, School of Law 
Daniel W. Hering, Dean, Graduate Faculty 
Thomas M. Balliet, Dean, School of Pedagogy 
William J. Coates, Dean, Veterinary College 
Charles H. Snow, Dean, School of Applied Science 
James E. Lough, Director, Summer School 

Wesleyan University 

William Arnold Shanklin, President 

Oberlin College 

Leonard W. Hatch, Alumnus 

Buffalo Public Library 

Walter L. Brown, Librarian 

Mount Holyoke College 
Florence Punngton, Dean 

Union Theological Seminary 
Francis Brown, President 

Ohio Wesleyan University 

Robert Irving Fulton, Dean, School of Oratory 

Fordham University 

Thomas J. McClusky, President 

Iowa State University 

J. G. Bowman, President 



Inauguration Proceedings 1 15 

University of Missouri 

Hamilton M. Dawes, Alumnus 

University of Rochester 
Rush Rhees, President 

Northwestern University 

William Francis Doody, Alumnus 

Washington University 

George H. Pegram, Alumnus 

Tufts College 

Charles Ernest Fay, Wade Professor of Modern 
Languages 

College of the City of New York 

Charles Baskerville, Professor of Chemistry 
Walter E. Clark, Professor of Political Science 
Harry A. Overstreet, Professor of Philosophy 
Herbert R. Moody, Associate Professor of Chem- 
istry 
Samuel A. Baldwin, Professor of Music 
Frederick G. Reynolds, Professor of Mathematics 
Charles Downer, Professor of Romance Languages 
Paul Saurel, Professor of Mathematics 
Stephen P. Duggan, Professor of Education 
Carleton L. Brownson, Dean 
Thomas A. Storey, Professor of Hygiene 

Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn 
Fred W. Atkinson, President 

Elmira College 

A. Cameron Mackenzie, President 

Alfred University 

Boothe C. Davis, President 



1 1 6 The University of the Stale of New York 

New York Homeopathic Medical College and 
Flower Hospital 
Royal S. Copeland, Dean 

St Stephen's College 

William Cunningham Rodgers, President 
David Henry Clarkson 
Alfred Douglas Phoenix 

University of Washington 
Theodore C. Frye 

College of St Francis Xavier 
Joseph H. Rockwell, President 

Vassar College 

Abby Leach, Professor of Greek 

Henry S. White, Professor of Mathematics 

Manhattan College 

Brother Edward, President 

Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences 
Henry R. Howland, Superintendent 

Cornell University 

George P. Bristol, Dean, School of Education 
William M. Polk, Dean, Medical College 
V. A. Moore, Dean, New York State Veterinary 
College 

Lehigh University 

Henry Sturgis Drinker, President 
Morrill Emery Nott, Vice President 

West Virginia University 

Thomas E. Hodges, President 



Inauguration Proceedings 1 1 7 

Wells College 

Kerr D. Macmillan, President 

American Museum of Natural History 
E. A. Covey, Curator 
G. Clyde Fisher, Assistant Curator 

Ohio State University 

William Oxley Thompson, President 

St John's College 

J. W. Moore, President 

Boston University 

Lemuel Herbert Murlin, President 

Smith College 

Ada Louise Comslock, Dean 

Wellesley College 

Malvina M. Bennett, Professor of Elocution 

American Library Association 

Walter L. Brown, Librarian, Buffalo Public Library 

Johns Hopkins University 

Kirby Flower Smith, Professor of Latin 

Metropolitan Museum of Art 
Henry W. Kent 

American Society of Mechanical Engineers 
Arthur M. Greene, jr, Honorary Vice President 
and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Rens- 
selaer Polytechnic Institute 

Canisius College 

George J. Krim, President 
J. Havens Richards 
M. J. Ahern 



1 1 8 The University of the Stale of New York 

Chautauqua Institution 

Frank Chapin Bray, Editor, The Chautauquan 

St Francis College 

Brother David, President 

Connecticut State Library 

George S. Godard, State Librarian 

Temple University 

Russell H. Conwell, President 
Wilmer Krusen 

Brooklyn College of Pharmacy 

Thomas F. Raymond, Instructor 

Jewish Theological Seminary of America 
Jacob H. Schiff, Trustee 

Normal College of the City of New York 
George S. Davis, President 

Clark University 

G. Stanley Hall, President 

Keuka College 

Joseph A. Serena, President 

New York State Normal College 
William J. Milne, President 
Leonard A. Blue, Dean 
Leonard W. Richardson, Professor of Greek an ^ 

Latin 
A. W. Risley, Professor of History 

New York Botanical Garden 

W. A. Murrill, Assistant Director 



Inauguration Proceedings 1 19 

Syracuse University 

John L. Heffron, Dean, College of Medicine 
James B. Brooks, Dean, College of Law 

University of Chicago 

Harry Pratt Judson, President 

University of New Mexico 

Douglass W. Johnson, Professor of Physiography, 
Columbia University 

New York Public Library 
Agnes Van Valkenburgh 

American Scenic and Historic Preservation 
Society 
George F. Kunz, President 

Adelphi College 

William C. Peckham, Professor of Physics 
John F. Coar 

Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research 
Simon Flexner, Director 

Carnegie Institute of Technology 
Arthur W. Tarbell 

William Smith College 

Lyman P. Powell, President of Hobart College 

French Institute in the United States 

McDougall Hawkes, Chairman, Board of Trustees 

Museum of French Art 

Thomas Hughes Kelly, Vice Chairman, Board of 
Trustees 



120 The University of the State of New York 

International Council of Nurses 

M. Adelaide Nutting, Professor of Nursing and 
Health, Teachers College, Columbia University 

William M. Rice Institute for the Advance- 
ment of Literature, Science and Art 
Edgar Odell Lovett, President 



THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 

Regents of the University 
With years when terms expire 

1 9 1 7 ST CLAIR McKelwaY M.A. LL.D. D.C.L. L.H.D. 

Chancellor Brooklyn 

1914 PLINY T. SEXTON LL.B. LL.D. Vice Chancellor Palmyra 

1915 ALBERT VANDER VEER M.D. M.A. Ph.D. LL.D. Albany 

1922 CHESTER S. LORD M.A. LL.D. - - - New York 

1918 WILLIAM NOTTINGHAM M.A. Ph.D. LL.D. - Syracuse 
1921 FRANCIS M. CARPENTER .... Mount Kisco 

1923 ABRAM I. ELKUS LL.B. D.C.L. - - - New York 

1916 LUCIUS N. LITTAUER B.A. - - - Gloversville 

1924 ADELBERT MOOT Buffalo 

1 925 Charles B. Alexander M.A. LL.B. LL.D. Litt.D. Tuxedo 

1919 John Moore Elmira 

1920 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN M.A. LL.B. LL.D. - - New York 



